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SARAH CANDACE (PEARSE) PARKER 

LA 2317 
.P37S27 
1900 : 



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MRS. L. F. PARKER, 1853 



Sarah Candace (Pearse) Parker 



A MEMORIAL 



FOR THOSE WHO LOVED HER. 






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FOREAVORD. 



A woman honored in Grinnell, a former pupil of 
Mrs. L. F. Parker, writes: "1 need not tell you that 
Mrs. Parker's words and teaching have been a help 
and an inspiration to me from my earliest school 
days. Hers will linger in memory longer than the 
words or the teaching of any other. I count it an 
honor not only to have known her face to face, but 
also, in more than one rare moment, heart to heart. 
Her friendship has been to me a beautiful benediction." 

Professor J. Irving Manatt, LL. D., of Brown Uni- 
versity, and formerly a pupil of hers, wrote in the 
New England Magazine: Under her instruction, 
with her "high ideals and engaging personality, how 
many a frontier lad and lass learned for the first time 
to look up — to take some true measure of life." 

James L. Hill, D. D., of Salem, Mass, , closes a 
glowing eulogy of her with the assurance that: "No 
one can forget her. She left her mark on everybody 
she taught. No other woman ever did so much for 
Iowa College." 

Another voice comes from the editorial rooms of 
the Christian Advocate, of Pittsburg, and similar 
ones from persons widely scattered between two 
oceans, saying: "She was my ideal woman, a type 
of all that is loveliest and noblest." 



In responding to the request of friends for a sketch 
of the history of such a one, the writer ventures the 
hope of pardon if, now and then, he permits a glimpse 
of his personal appreciation of the celestial who has 
been half, or more than half, of his very life during 
more than fifty years. He could hardly ask forgive- 
ness from the friends for whom this is written if he 
should do less. 

L. F. P. 

Grinnell, November I6th, 1900. 




MRS. L. F. PARKER, iS 



MRS. L. F". PARKER. 



Soon after the American Revolution Richard Pearse 
left Bristol, R. I., to take possession of unimproved 
land in Vermont, which was then a magnetic center 
of pioneer hope. His ancestors had been connected 
with Bristol enterprise from the earliest period of 
white settlement there. They resided but a few miles 
from the scene of King Philip's life and death, and 
on the spot where his fagots burned the dwellings 
of the whites and where his tomahawk drank their 
blood. There was a tradition in the family, also, 
that, in a special emergency in the Revolutionary 
War, in response to a winter call, a member of it 
hastened into the army wearing a suit of colored 
clothes made up at home, the wool of which had pro- 
tected the sheep only forty-eight hours before. 

The Vermont land chosen by Mr. Pearse was in 
the present town of Sudbury, lying chiefly in a de- 
lightful little valley which was diversified by wood- 
land, stream and lake, and encircled by a coronet of 
hills. He occupied it until his death, when it passed 
into the hands of Timothy Pearse, his tenth child. 

—5— 



It was added joy in Timothy's young family on Feb- 
ruary 21st, 1828, and a prophecy of hfe-long helpful- 
ness to every member of it, when "Sarah Candace" en- 
tered it. She found in it her parents, about twenty- 
six years old; a sister two years of age, an infirm 
aunt and an aged grandmother. Her mother, named 
Harriet Wilder at birth, allied her to the English 
Wilders and the Scotch McClellans. On her father's 
side she was a relative of the Pecks (now represented 
in the Paris Exposition by United States Commis- 
sioner E. W. Peck), of the Wheelers and of Presi- 
dent Monroe's family, and inherited a name from the 
Welsh Pearses. Little Sarah soon became the wait- 
ing-maid of all, and especially of the grandmother, 
whose stern, Spartan mold made a profound im- 
pression on the child. Her memory was rich in 
anecdotes, her heart was loving, her ideas forceful, 
her words imperative. She expected and received 
cheerful service, and repaid it with hearty atTection 
and strong-minded companionship. 

The young parents were of choicest New England 
spirit. Neither was demonstrative; both were the 
soul of sincerity. Even Henry Ward Beecher, who 
met so many who carried their ' 'conscience in their 
pockets," would never think of looking there for 
theirs. They were kindred in purpose, and every 
good deed of the one was heartily seconded by the 
other. They were christian, intelligently, persist- 
ently, unostentatiously christian, but never invisibly 
so. They did not neglect their proper business for 
any religious exercise, for religious exercises were a 
noteworthy part of their business. All their busi- 

—6— 



ness, indeed, was religious. The Congregational 
church of Sudbury was largely indebted to the Pearses. 
Not infrequently the father, mother and two daugh- 
ters, while near ten years of age, constituted the en- 
tire choir. About that time Vermont was the source 
of 'Millerism' and of the expectation that the world 
would be consumed in March, 1843. Many of that 
Sudbury church were swept off their feet then, and 
into the vortex of that exciting error, and from that 
into agnosticism and atheism — but none of that 
family. 

An octogenarian in Iowa loves now to tell of his 
life in the Pearse family, where he learned to be "dili- 
gent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." 
He says that Mr. Pearse invited him to attend revival 
services but that he declined because he was unwill- 
ing to lose the time. "But," said his employer, 
"your time shall go on as if you were on the farm." 
He accepted the opportunity to rest, and, contrary to 
his original plan, entered upon a new life. To that 
invitation made influential by the magnetic religion 
of the household, he attributes his own love and that 
of his children and his grandchildren for all that is 
most noble and holiest in this world or in any other. 

Total abstinence was a new idea then, and Mr. 
Pearse adopted it with all its logical consequences. 
He learned that some of his neighbors were becoming 
cider-topers on the cider made at his mill. He at 
once destroyed the mill. He might have said that 
the cider which left it was excellent, without a harm- 
ful element in it, that his patrons alone were respon- 
sible for all its injurious qualities and for its unwise 



use. His conscience, however, was sensitive and his 
interest in others was sincere. No neighbor of his 
should ever again become temporarily insane by any 
avoidable act of his, and he accounted every man his 
neighbor. Slavery, also, was' convulsing church and 
state in his time. Opposition to it in the North 
ranged from silence to fanaticism. His substantial 
position was the one which eventually made Kansas 
a free state, saved the Union and emancipated the 
American slave. Even in the presence of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law, a hungry man — whether white or 
black — could eat at his table, and a traveler could 
ride in his wagon even if he should be seeking the 
Canadian line and an Englishman's freedom on the 
other side. 

It was before the organization of that Sudbury 
family that Judson and Mills had kindled the foreign 
missionary contlagration in many American hearts 
and homes. The thought that the Gospel should be 
carried to Persia and to India seemed natural to those 
parents and to their children. It became part of their 
daily thought, for they pondered the Missionary Her- 
ald and missionaries were frequent guests at their 
table. The children could never tell when the mis- 
sionary idea first captivated them. 

Nevertheless the parents were never so unwisely 
altruistic as to forget home duties or neighborhood 
obligations. With only moderate means at com- 
mand their own necessities were first supplied, and, 
with them, 'necessities' included choice books and an 
unusually good district school. No book was placed 
in the hand of a child until it had been read and ap- 



proved by the father. The school house was better 
furnished with apparatus than any other in that re- 
gion, for Mr. Pearse supplemented public supplies 
by personal gifts. That self-appointed guardian of 
the school was permitted to please himself by obtain- 
ing the best teachers and levying frequent contribu- 
tions on Middlebury College for that purpose. From 
that source came such men as Samuel S. Sherman 
(now LL. D.), who later attained an enviable repu- 
tation as a teacher in the South and in Wisconsin, 
and who now, at past eighty-five, retains the intel- 
lectual vigor of his prime. Another of those able 
teachers was Alvah Hovey, whom Baptists will rec- 
ognize readily as "D. D.'' and "LL. D.", and as the 
long-time head of their Newton Theological Institute 
of high repute in Massachusetts and in the world. 

The mother, gentle as a dove, secured compliance 
with her wishes in the home by a hint usually; at all 
events compliance was secured. She filled the house 
with the fragrance of Paradise, with its beauty of 
spirit and sweetness of song. There the usual good 
night with the children was the song, in which all 
joined: 

"Glory to Thee, my God, this night, 
For all the blessings of the light," etc. 

The first sound in the morning which floated into 
their chambers and aroused them from sleep was the 
stanza from the hymn of Isaac Watts: 

"Lord, in the morning Thou shalt hear 

My voice ascending high; 

■ To Thee will I direct my prayer, 

To Thee lift up mine eye." 

Snatches of song enlivened the day, and made every 
—9— 



duty easier. Worksongs made labor exhilarating 
and character-building-. 

The love of home became an enthusiasm not only 
by looking out upon the valley so carefully culti- 
vated, on the beauty of the encircling hills and upon 
the crown of blue above them, but also by the song 
so often sung in solo and in chorus: 
"Charming little valley, 
Smiling all so gaily. 
Like an angel's brow; 
Spreading out thy treasures, 
Calling us to pleasures 
Pure and bright as thou. 

Skies are bright above thee. 
Peace and quiet love thee. 
Tranquil little dell; 
In thy fragrant bowers. 
Twining wreaths of flowers. 
Love and friendship dwell. 
May our spirits daily 
Be like thee, sweet valley. 
Tranquil and serene; 
Emblem to us given 
Of the vales of Heaven, 
Ever bright and green." 

In that family it was a joy to live, a pleasure to 
serve. That happy home was a perpetual inspira- 
tion to dit^'use happiness. The children there could 
easily imagine that Heaven was not far away. From 
such a home children susceptible to the most delicate 
impressions of honor and of exalted character could 
go with only the loftiest ideals of life. There pessi- 
mism could find no recruits, and the blandishments 
of vice seemed insults to intelligence. 

—10— 



When fifteen years old, Sarah spent a year in Bran- 
don Seminary, and, at sixteen, accompanied the fami- 
ly to Oberlin, Ohio, but with farewell tears for 'the 
Diamond Rock,' the 'charming little valley,' and the 
school friends of her earliest atfection. 

The father at forty-three, in 1844, began his west- 
ern life in a forest with a small property, for his 
name on the note of a friend had robbed him of a 
competence. But there his house was scarcely fin- 
ished and but a few acres of his land had been opened 
by his ax to the sunshine when his wife became a 
widow and his children fatherless. 

The skies seemed leaden, but the mother was a 
quiet heroine, the two small boys took on new man- 
liness, the older sister was in Heaven, and Sarah 
found the world rich in friendships. Oberlin people 
took very kindly to her. All of them did not intro- 
duce themselves as Mr. Finney did, however. As he 
was entering a sitting-room where she was, she with- 
drew; but having occasion to return, she entered when 
his back was turned toward her. Her footstep was 
heard. He turned sharply upon her with, "Who is this. 
Father Parsons? Who is this?" Without waiting 
an instant for a reply, fixing his great eyes full upon 
hers, he asked: "Do you love God?" Then turn- 
ing quickly, he exclaimed: "If she don't, ?he don't 
deserve to live and isn't fit to die! is she. Father Par- 
sons?" No further introduction was needed. There 
was nothing arctic between them after that, and he 
commonly addressed her as "My Daughter." 

Her poise of character, accurate scholarship and 
genial spirit opened opportunities to teach in public 

—11— 



schools and in college preparatory classes, so far as 
time allowed; her expenses were light, and in every 
emergency assistance was volunteered. Within a 
year of graduation a call to a principalship in the Cin- 
cinnati schools came to her unsought. She could 
teach two years, be quite independent, and graduate 
with the one whose name she had consented to as- 
sume. She accepted the invitation. 

The gentleman who had drawn her away to Cin- 
cinnati gave out that she was coming from the West- 
ern Reserve, near Cleveland, foi Oberlin was then 
(in 1848) in special disfavor along the Ohio river, 
across which many an Eliza was flying toward Ober- 
lin and Canada. On one occasion she was reminded 
of the new atmosphere which she had entered. John 
M. Langston, a classmate and a superior gentleman 
and scholar, the son of his master, and later a mem- 
ber of congress from eastern Virginia, delivered a 
package at her boarding place for her but did not ask 
to see her. When they next met, "Why did you 
not call for me?" she inquired. 

"Do you not know that it would have cost you 
your position.?" he responded. His suggestion was 
correct, for that was before Salmon P. Chase was 
sent to the United States senate as a free-soil demo- 
crat, and several years before even the Congregation- 
alists of the country stood "on the grave of buried 
prejudices" at Oberlin. 

Her examination there secured her a first-class cer- 
tificate in all studies, although her knowledge of Nat- 
ural History had been derived entirely from the choice 
books which her father had placed in her very juve- 

—12— 



nile hands. Her position, too, was very gratifying. 
At the end of the first year, however, the Board of 
Education contemplated giving her a more~difflcult 
place. Two members called at ditferent times to 
confer with her on the subject. The first one found 
her at recess surrounded by a bevy of girls at her feet, 
leaning on her chair, and clinging to her person. 
The second one said to her in the presence of her 
school: "We want you to go to another ward." At 
once the children sprang to their feet, exclaiming: 
"Don't go, teacher, don't go!" 

At the end of the second year the board asked her 
to accept the principalship of the high school — an 
enviable position and at a liberal salary — but she de- 
clined to change her original plan. On her recom- 
mendation Miss Mary Atkins, a very accomplished 
lady and teacher, was installed in the place. 

From Cincinnati she bore away a sea of happiest 
memories of teachers, of pupils, of her connection 
with Dr. Lowell Mason's Handel and Haydn Society, 
and even of some hours of anxious thought. She 
had gone there not merely for the salary but largely 
for the privilege of serving her pupils. She loved 
them for what they might become. All intercourse 
with them had their improvement distinctly in view. 
For this she opened her school daily with scripture 
reading and prayer, and was perhaps the only one 
in the city who did so. In that exercise the children 
in her rudest ward heard the outflow of her sincerest 
interest in them and gave their warmest love in re- 
sponse. Outside of the schoolroom opposition to 
the religious exercise appeared. Threats of news- 

—13— 



paper attacks were made; friends called to consult. 
"Is a compromise possible?'' was their query. "No 
other exercise has been so helpful. I can leave but 1 
can not surrender." Her calm resolution and the 
enthusiastic love of her children was a sufficient sup- 
plementary answer. Nothing was printed; nothing 
was changed. The incident was a victory and a 
prophecy. 

She returned to college in 1850 and to the associa- 
tions in which mind and heart are unveiled with 
completest unreserve. She returned to tried friends, 
to those who had given her classes to teach, to her 
pupils in college, and to those who had placed her 
at the head of the largest choir in the state. She re- 
turned to the group in which every young lady was 
loved as a sister, and every young man had been 
treated as she would wish to have another treat her 
own brother. Delicately, even to young men, she 
had uttered words of honest appreciation, and, just 
as delicately, she had spoken words of gentlest yet 
direct reproof, and all without any appearance of 
prudery or of self-conscious wisdom or piety. She 
had often thought that no American college or mod- 
ern school of the prophets ever had a faculty so 
nobly inspiring as that in Oberlin from 1840 to 
1850. Is was, indeed, a rare privilege to be in the 
great choir led by George N. Allen, to sit in the 
classroom of James Dascomb, James A. Thome, 
James Monroe or James H. Fairchild, and to listen 
to the public addresses of Asa Mahan, the admirer of 
Kant, of John Morgan, of universal scholarship and 
superb common-sense, and of Charles G. Finney, 

—14— 



who might have been a dramatic star if he had not 
been the largest minded revivahst of the century and 
an eminently philosophic theologian. 

It has been said that at Oxford the students are 
the real teachers, and even Edward Everett Hale says 
that "the good of a college is not in what it teaches" 
but "is to be had from the fellows who are there." 
With that in mind, even, her life at Oberlin was at a 
favorable time. It remained a life-long pleasure that 
she could be on terms of intimacy in formative days 
in choir or class, in college society or in social life 
with such young women as Sallie Holley, Jane 
Loughridge, the Strong sisters, Lucy Stone, Antoinette 
L. Brown and Mary Atkins, and with young men 
like John M. Ellis, who went from a carpenter's shop 
to a professorship in Oberlin college; like Thomas 
H. Robinson, whose whitewashing in college aided 
in paying college expenses and did not prevent a thir- 
ty years' pastorate in Harrisburg or a twenty years' 
professorship in Western Theological Seminary, and 
like J. Dolson Cox, whose bread-making in the col- 
lege boarding-hall antedated his state and national 
service as Ohio legislator and governor, as Union 
general in the Civil War, as Grant's Secretary of the 
Interior, and as a graceful and reliable historian in 
later years. Even if Samuel F. Cooper is named 
today, who has served his generation nobly as 
colonel in war and as banker, judge, consul and 
legislator in peace, and J. A. R. Rodgers whose name 
is written in enduring honor in the history of Berea 
College, many must still be nameless here whom 

she recalled in happiest remembrance through tlfty 
years. 

—15— 



The two years after her graduation were devoted 
to teaching" in Vermont and in Willoughby (now 
Painesville) Female Seminary in Ohio. As usual with 
her, they were years of transforming influence, years 
of the formation of grateful friendships which illumi- 
nated every succeeding year of life. 

She was married August 21, 1853. The three 
succeeding years were spent chiefly in the school 
with her husband in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Her 
tact in discovering and in winning those who were 
liable to think too much of something less valuable 
than superior scholarship, was illustrated as she en- 
tered her room there for the first time. As usual, all 
the pupils were eager to take the measure of the new 
teacher at once. They lingered about the entrance 
looking keenly into her face. To one of them she 
said: "What is your name.?" "Ge Hoover." "There's 
lots of fun in your eyes, Ge, but you will leave it all 
out of doors, won't you?" "Yes'm," said the young 
rogue. He kept his promise. 

In 1856 the purpose to 'go West' was formed, not- 
withstanding urgencies to remain and offers to erect 
an academy if that was desired. But New England- 
ers and their descendants have a preference for a 
Yankee environment, where customs are familiar and 
ancestral relationships can be maintained. Lawrence, 
Kansas, tempted, but her husband's experience there 
when Colonel Buford's party was entering the terri- 
tory from Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, 
and when John Brown reached the town just after 
it had been burned, made a soldier's service seem 
more opportune then than a teacher's. Tabor sent 

—16— 



an invitation, but the place appeared embarrassingly 
near the corner of the state. An Oberlin classmate, 
Mr. Samuel F. Cooper, sent an assurance that Grin- 
nell, his home, was the town of promise ; Rev. George 
W. Clark, an evangelist familiar with Iowa, gave 
independent emphasis to the same thought. Their 
influence prevailed. Grinnell became her home when 
the town was a prairie dot two years old. 

"Grinnell University" was then on paper. Iowa- 
College was in Davenport, had graduated five stu- 
dents, and was closed two years later, A few young 
women had been admitted tentatively to the institu- 
tion in Davenport, but when re-opened in Grinnell 
it was distinctively as a co-educational institution. 
Mrs. Parker was employed as a teacher in it in 1862, 
and was chosen to be the first "Lady Principal" the 
next year. 

Her teaching in Grinnell had been only occasional 
and wholly without regard to compensation before 
1862; after that time her salary ranged from $250 
to $400. She was in pioneer and home missionary 
conditions. Passing hours were full of toil, but 
seemed rich in opportunity. In sympathy with col- 
lege aims, in a community of congenial spirits, and 
with young men and young women in the institution 
who gave her their most sacred confidences and 
sought her counsel, she devoted herself to her varied 
and heavy tasks with the zeal of a martyr. 

The care alone of her growing family when she was 
thirty-four years old was enough for a strong woman, 
but she gladly added to that the responsibilities of 
teacher, organizer, counselor, and mother for 'her girls' 

—17— 



especially, and the work of hostess for their friends.* 
She was all these, and remarkably successful in each 
impersonation. In all, her generalship was as quiet 
as Grant's and as successful in her sphere. Difficul- 
ties melted away under her touch or shrank into 
smallest possible proportions. Work strictly colle- 
giate pressed most heavily upon her in the spring and 
summer of 1864, when all the male pupils of mili- 
tary age were in the army with her husband, and the 
college became, practically, a female seminary. In 
only one letter did she ever give expression to her 
burdens, and then said she would never name them 
again. She never did. But her associates were nobly 
considerate. The undergraduate young ladies made 
the commencement of that year a memorable one. 
This was but natural, for her pupils — taken into her 
heart on introduction and into her home when sick, 
and receiving healing from her loving smile, her gen- 
tle touch and her wise ministrations — had good 
memories. She felt that she was moving among 
moral heroes; their response was admiration, alTec- 
tion and cheerful cooperation. Her supreme effort, 
however, was to ennoble character, and if the expres- 
sions of gratitude by her pupils for her success in this 
regard in those days and since then could be trans- 
muted into granite, no other monument would be 
needed to mark the spot where her mortal remains 
now rest. 

In such hours of toil the trustees came to her fam- 

*The wife of a professor from New England, after residing near fier 
for a time, said to her: ''You nialce. rae tired." "How so?" "Tliere 
is such an endless stream of callers at your house for meals and for 
lodging." That entertainment seemed to be a pioneer necessity. 

—18— 



ily for an added service: "The college boarding- 
house is returning nothing to the institution. Two 
parties in succession have failed financially and ut- 
terly. Must we advance our charges for board? We 
want you to solve the problem by taking charge of 
the hall," To such an appeal she could only yield 
assent. The solution was favorable for the college 
and for the students, and largely because of her mas- 
terly skill in household economics. The hall yielded 
an income ever after. The price for board was not 
increased. 

The trustees sent her out, also, to study the meth- 
ods of older institutions for women. On that tour 
it was her pleasure to be the first person admitted in- 
to Vassar for that purpose. Her report gratified the 
trustees and gave them renewed confidence in the 
general plans adopted here. 

Special credit is due to her for the organization of 
the Ladies' Education Society in the college. Miss 
Hester A. Hillis, in 1862, was in need of funds beyond 
her reach. Mrs. Julius A. Reed, an ever-reponsive 
friend, joined Mrs. Parker in planning for assistance. 
The terms of the Education Society at Jacksonville, 
Illinois, were under consideration. A friend inquired: 
"Why not organize such a society in Grinnell and for 
Iowa College.'" Mrs. Parker accepted the idea.* It 
was the natal hour of a most useful organization. 
It has been a gracious providence to many, a fountain 
of good around the globe. Eighty-five young women 

*A somewhat recent letter from a member of the Jacksonville So- 
ciety at that time, notices the correspondence on that subject and 
that Mrs. Reed closed it saying: "Mrs. Parker says: 'No, we will 
not ask aid from abroad; we will take care of Miss Hillis ourselves.' " 

—19— 



have been assisted by it, and its assets now amount 
to over $6,000, most of which may be loaned to 
worthy applicants. The records of its early years 
bear witness to a kind of christian audacity in prom- 
ising funds not in sight, and to an unexpected inflow 
in every instance "which precisely supplied the 
want," Mrs. Parker did not intend to imitate George 
Muller in making those promises, but to use every 
effort to redeem them; and in every instance the 
means of doing so came before she had time to make 
the effort! Nothing could seem more providential 
than the receipt of those funds. 

The visit of Mrs. Lavinia W. Pierce to Grinnell in 
1 864 made her a conspicuous benefactor of that so- 
ciety. An impecunious college student enlisted her 
interest; an interview with the lady principal deep- 
ened it. She decided to assist her. Before it was 
done, the inquiry was made: "May it not be done 
through the Education Society and by its methods?" 
The plans of the society were a revelation to the vis- 
itor. She was delighted with them. They were 
kept in happy memory after her return to Springfield, 
Massachusetts, by her continued and cordial corres- 
pondence with the lady principal. At the end of her 
life, a few months later, the unexpected provision 
was found in her will that $1,000 should be placed 
in the hands of the college trustees as an endowment 
fund for the benefit of that society. 

Its usefulness has transcended the highest expecta- 
tions of its most optimistic friends. 

Her residence in Iowa City from 1870 to 1888 gave 
her a pleasant relief from excessive toil, even though 

—20— 



she taught some of her husband's classes in the uni- 
versity in 1875, while he was in Europe. She al- 
ways maintained a close connection with collegiate 
life by opening her rooms to students as visitors and 
as members of her family and by attending their 
public exercises, in many of which she took part in 
some ot^icial way during her eighteen years in Iowa 
City and her last twelve in Grinnell. 

Her frequent visits to the Rocky Mountains were 
always a source of thrilling delight before and after 
1880, Then- canons and the contorted strata of 
their rocky sides, their rushing streams and silvery 
falls, their flowery dells and snow-capped summits, 
their arch of sky so brightly blue above them and 
their panorama of rocks and plain changing like fairy 
land at every step — these, all these, charmed the eye, 
fired the imagination, caused every nerve to tingle 
with pleasure, and photographed themselves upon 
the mind in fadeless memories. On those mountain 
rambles at sixty she was but a girl of sixteen again 
in endurance and in enthusiastic expression. They 
recalled the hours of a happy youth among Vermont 
hills and on its Green Mountains. There, too, came 
the sublime thoughts of poet and of prophet, as with 
Shelley she saw "The mountains kiss high heaven," 
and, with Pope, "Hills peep o'er hills and Alps on 
Alps arise," and as she looked on Pike's Peak she 
remembered Goldsmith's words: 

"Round his breast the rolling- clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on his head." 

There, too, came vivid recollections that, "The strength 
of the hills is His also," and, "As the mountains are 

—21— 



round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about 
His people.'' 

A similar yet a more varied joy was hers in 1880, 
as she traversed Europe from Scotland to the Medi- 
terranean and from Dublin to Berlin and Venice with 
her eldest daughter, for there were the added charms 
from human life, from art, and from the memorials 
of human history. We reproduce a single contribu- 
tion of hers to the press during these tours, to indicate 
something of her habit of observation, her sources 
of pleasure, and her forms of expression: 

"FROM VIENNA TO VENICE — IN VENICE." 

" 'God made the country, and man made the town,' never 
touched us with its strength of meaning till we crossed the 
Semmering. We had admired Vienna by night and by day, 
its streets brilliant with light and the display of merchandise; 
its palatial homes, their gardens and fountains; its immense 
and costly edifices; its galleries with treasures from the old 
and the new. We had grown ecstatic over Schonbrunn, the 
Emperor's summer palace; its wonderful park of carefully 
trimmed trees whose interlacing boughs shaded all walks; 
its superbly beautiful garden, surrounded by high hedges, 
into which at short intervals fine statuary is set; and on an 
eminence, green as Erin and cool with fountains, that impos- 
ing colonnade, the Glorietta. 'Only Paris could show us 
more,' we thought. 

"We leave the enchanting city. When out on the plain, 
the dim outline of mountains appears in the distance. As we 
draw nearer and nearer, castles and snow-tipped peaks appear 
through cloud and haze. We enter a little defile, and, passing 
through, we reach the station. A moment's stay, the bell 
gives its three taps, the engine slightly whistles, the railway 
employees lift their hats and bow to the train officers, and 
in silence we move on. 

"With one deep inspiration, simultaneously, we rise to our 

—22— 



feet, for never did our eyes rest on such a mais'nificent view 
as this on the Semmerinsj-. We had entered a vast amphi- 
theater built by no human hand. Its upper tier was in the 
cloud-land, gray and silvery; its middle, green with pine and 
the fresh growth of spring; its lower, bright with the flora 
of May and dotted with the homes of the peasant and the 
villas of the more wealthy. Its stage was the exquisite little 
village, its parquet the meadows and gardens. Up and around 
this vast circumference we were to go, and without fear, 
for no iron bridges imperilled us, no crazy wooden structures 
could catch a spark and burn, or break and plunge us into 
the depths. Solid stone arches, tier on tier, bore the stately 
train over ravines; massive masonry on the right protected 
us from land or snow slides, and battlements of stone guarded 
us from a fall on the left. Tunnels lined with brick and mortar 
led us through promontories of rock, and at the end of every 
one we exclaimed, 'This view is more charming than the last.' 
We rode toward the tops of the tallest pines, then left them 
far below; we gazed down on the white, smooth roads, on 
vineyard and orchard, rushing cataract and silver waterfall, 
and back on the arches, the heights and depths over which 
we had come, till we plunged into the mountain and out 
again, to find only another view that rivalled the 'Happy 
Valley.' For two hours we were in a state of ecstacy. 

"On the height the trains paused. Women reached out to 
us bouquets of spring flowers and the edelweiss arranged in 
crosses and many fanciful designs. Here is the boundary 
between Austria and Styria. The descent is a perfect con- 
trast to the ascent. We follow the lovely valley of the Murz. 
Forges, villas, chateaus and old castles are all along the Murz 
and the Mur till we enter the rocks again. Seven hundred 
yards of viaduct, the same of tunnel, and we are on the Drau 
and soon in Marburg, the second town in Styria. More than 
five hours had we been in the heart of the mountains. At 
noon the next day Venice was in sight. 

"We almost fancied we had been there before. The Grand 
Canal, the gondolas, the old palaces, looked very familiar, 
and it was delightful to miss the noise of the carriage and 
—23— 



train and hear only the dip of the oar and the call of the 
gondoliers as we passed under the bridges, around curves, 
between darting boats, until we came out again on the grand 
canal and the Riva degli Schiavoni. Here, where Chiesa del 
Salute heads the view to the right, the harbor in front, the 
Park and Lido to the left, we were to spend three quiet, rest- 
ful days at Pension Ausora, in the churches, palaces and mu- 
seums of this island city. To row about the decaying archi- 
tecture and see the crabs come up on the moss at the water's 
edge to eat and sun themselves, to watch the open markets 
as we pass, — as fresh with vegetables and bright with sum- 
mer fruits as our own, and more radiant with flowers — to 
cross the Rialto and think of the Merchant of Venice and the 
noble Portia, to meet the Shylocks still trading there, to 
watch the moving masses on the narrow streets, explore the 
Bridge of Sighs and the dungeon, to ramble through the 
rooms of the Doge's Palace, was only a little of what filled 
all days. The beautiful Chiesa de Gesuiti will be a delight to 
remember, with its marble and verde-antico draperies and 
carvings. 

"We walk to the Arcades with the throng, we sip our cafe 
noir with the multitude that we may have a seat and watch 
the moving thousands and listen to the band that plays on 
the evening of Pentecost. We watch the clock to see the 
man (statue) on the top strike the hour, and when the other 
clocks have struck, to see him on the other side repeat the 
hour. We pace the broad piazza and view the regiments of 
soldiers, see the doves flit and eat, gaze on the historic bronze 
horses, the lofty campanile, and give our last morning to St. 
J\\ark's. But we cannot comprehend or remember it. It is 
too much— the blending of all styles, all ages, all marbles, 
with the mosaics and frescoes, statuary and ancient tombs, 
and we leave feeling more ignorant than we went in. 

"But ah! The last evening! It was moonlight, and we 
had reviewed the shops, the Rialto, the boats with their tiny 
lights, till we, too, longed for a quiet ride in these omnibuses 
of Venice. By the piazzetta we found our gondolier, and in 
a moment we were off", past Salute, Desdemona's house, the 
—24— 



palaces on the Grand Canal, till we reached the great toll 
bridge, when we returned and came to where the Austrian 
Lloyd steamer was anchored and just ready to sail. A mul- 
titude of boats with tiny lights were flitting about like fire- 
flies on a summer's eve. Two gondolas had brilliant colored 
lanterns, and in them an Italian band of singers gave their 
finest songs. The ship sent up its rockets and blue lights in 
response. Many times this was repeated, till a voice shouted, 
"Viva Italia!" and the crowd huzzaed. From the shore came, 
"Viva Venezia!" and hundreds on the wharf responded. 
Again and again came shout and huzza with all the enthusi- 
asm of a sunny clime, till the steamer puffed, the singers 
turned toward land, the tiny lights scattered, the crowds dis- 
persed, the steamer was off, and all was still in Venice." 

With such keenness of observation, and such a thrill 
of pleasure she visited museums and galleries, studied 
old Chester and older Rome and more modern Ber- 
lin, and took mental photographs of persons, of places 
and of masterpieces of art. She had long been a 
diligent student of earlier and of later Europe, and 
was able to see much that would have been unseen 
by the eyes of one less informed. That year gave 
added zest to all her later study of European art and 
action, and stimulated her to write many a paper on 
European artists and on the makers of European his- 
tory for the literary and the historical societies in 
Iowa City and in Grinnell of which she became a 
member. 

The year 1880 opened with a rare family event. 
On its first day her grandmother was one hundred 
years old. The family assembled at Pittstield, Ohio, 
from points across the continent, to celebrate the day. 
Mrs. Parker read the family history on that occasion, 

—25— 



naming each descendant of the grandmother. We 
quote her opening and her closing words: 

"As the eldest living grandchild, and hence able to look 
farther backward than most here, I have been called on to 
review briefly the fortunes of this household. To the dead, 
not the living, I hope to give the just meed of praise in this 
'Family History': 

" 'They left the plowshare in the mold. 

The flocks and herds without a fold. 

The sickle in the unshorn grain, 

The corn half garnered on the plain, 

And mustered in their simple dress, 

For wrongs to seek a stern redress, 

To right those wrongs, come weal, come woe, 

To perish or o'ercome the foe.' 
"These lines, from the poet McLellan of Maine, we have 
all read with a thrill of pride and patriotism. I repeat them 
because a McLellan wrote them, and because they describe 
the men, the times and the patriotic fervor of the Old Thir- 
teen, when our 'house-mother' — ever blessed be her mem- 
ory — entered the lists on life's battle-Held, on the first hour 
of the day, the fust day of the week, the year and the decade 
in 1780, in the town of Royalton, in the old Bay State. Lilly 
McLellan she should have been christened, for Mary Lilly 
and Moses McLellan were the parental names, sounding 
strongly of Scotch sense, piety and learning. Three P's were 
the genii of her nursery — prudence, for there was little to 
own; patriotism, for country was the great good; piety, for 
'In God we Trust,' was the motto of the Revolution. 

"Her girlhood was passed in Petersham. In her twenty- 
first year, in the Mayday of life and in the Mayday of the 
year, 'mid bird-songs and apple-blooms, Daniel Wilder — her 
fair young Saxon lover — took his bonny, black-eyed Scotch 
bride to his home in the same town. In tSOS the young 
couple brought one daughter, Harriet, to the 'New State' of 
Vermont, and located in the valley that lies between Lake 

—26— 



Cliamplain and the Green Mountains, in Orwell, Vermont. 
There were added to their list of 'olive plants,' Orsemus, 
Artemas, Hosea, Joel, Almon, Daniel, Mary, Susan, and a 
baby boy whose few weeks of life gave him no name to 
record. Daniel smiled and prattled two brief years, then 
closed his dark eyes, stilled his little tongue, and the violets 
bloomed upon his earth-covered couch. 

"Bravely the pair subdued forest and field, battled with 
sickness, and kept the approaching 'wolf at bay, till, in 1835, 
the fever for the new west carried all but two of the family 
to Pittsfield, Lorain County, Ohio. Pioneer life a second 
time awaited them, and through its labor and privation a 
permanent home was gained before 'Uncle Sam was rich 
enough to give us all a farm.' 

"Let us pause here a moment and glance backward at one 
or two scenes that illustrate the spirit and the pleasures of 
their Vermont home. Who of the elders among us can for- 
get the winter singing-school, our chief source of acquaint- 
ance and social amusement? There the white-haired father, 
his five stalwart sons, his eldest and his two youngest daugh- 
ters, met the musical residents of two towns and sang Ux- 
bridge and Rockingham, Sherburne and Greenfield, and those 
beautiful anthems, 'Vital spark of heavenly tlame,' and 'The 
Fall of Babylon.' Who of us forgets the music of the Sud- 
bury choir, the venerable man with a voice deep and sono- 
rous as the strains of organ bass, and his sons and daughters 
making harmony that would rival Apollo's choir. And 
the Thanksgivings at the old home, when only three grand- 
children looked on with v^'ondering eyes, and watched and 
listened till the scene was painted on memory's canvas never 
to be effaced by time. The church service with its mem- 
orable choir, the cold ride, the longing look for 'grandpa's 
house,' the joy the first peep gave us, the incoming to the 
warmth of the great open fire-place, the loving reception 
and unwrapping. Then— oh, what a scene for hungry chil- 
dren!— the long table, the roast pig with a lemon in his mouth, 
the chicken pie elaborately ornamented, the riches of field, 

—27— 



orchard and garden spread along' the board — pumpkin pies 
and rice puddings with raisins in them, rare luxuries for 1S30; 
sweet doughnuts and golden apples, butternuts and walnuts. 
When all was ready the nine sons and daughters were called 
from the great square room. Each came and stood behind 
the chair assigned, and not till the last restless child was still 
did the reverend father give thanks and ask God's blessing 
on the feast and the family. Then quietly each was seated, 
and news, politics, the sermon and family affairs were dis- 
cussed with the dinner. 

****** 

"But, as the years rolled on, the winged archer met each 
child, emptied his quiver, and on Love's wings guided his 
captives to new homes. Then the lonely couple cheered 
themselves with memories of the past, with frequent visits to 
and from the flitted ones, who brought new voices and new 
faces into the bereft home, gathered on mother's birthday to 
celebrate it with feast and song — glees and hymns, old fugue 
tunes and anthems. 

"Longfellow says: 

'Into each life some rain must fall. 
Some days must be dark and dreary.' 
And hers whose centennial year we celebrate, and whose his- 
tory we only touch to-day, have not escaped. At sixty-two 
she lost a limb, at seventy-two a portion of the store laid by 
for declining years was lost, her collar-bone was broken at 
eighty-nine and her hip at ninety-three. Every limb has been 
broken or badly sprained, and many times has death seemed 
inevitable. Seventy years our ancestral pair shared each 
other's griefs and cares, comforts and joys, till in March, 
1871, after years of suffering from erysipelas, pneumonia 
broke both silver cord and golden chain, and our 'house- 
father' was at rest, aged ninety years. Not one of us can do 
his memory justice. Industry and an incorruptible honesty 
— deeds, not words, characterized his life. Scorning the 
world's shallow judgment by externals, he believed with 

Burns that, 

'A man's a man, for a' that.' 

—28— 



He was modestly and sincerely christian, bearing life's vicis- 
situdes and doing liis woric with his eye on the land of 

Beulah. 

* * * * x- * 

"The blood of five nationalities flows in our veins— Scotch 
from our mother, English from our father, and in the second 
generation backward uniting with Welsh, Irish and Dutch. 

"Thus reads the personal history of one hundred years — 
four generations. It is the usual record of life. Infant beauty 
perished, youthful promise blasted, young hopes disap- 
pointed, maturer plans failing, the support of age cut off, 
and — what compensation ! Suffering teaches us sweet sym- 
pathy, sorrow binds us closer and chafes away our pride, 
virtue brings its own reward, love begets love, and what 
makes earth a paradise or home a heaven more than sympa- 
thy and unity, virtue and love? 

"All this has come to her whose presence we honor to-day, 
who welcomesus to her home and calls us her children, and 
who sings in her heart, with Susan Coolidge: 
'Yet patiently I bide and stay, 
Knowing the secret of my fate; 
The hour of bloom, dear Lord, 1 wait. 
Come when it will, or soon or late, — 
A hundred years is but a day.' " 
Mrs. Parker was the only person who could write 
that history, the only one who had acquired such a 
personal familiarity with the life of every mem- 
ber of the family. 

While she was residing in Iowa City she interested 
herself in an effort to inaintain a Protestant Sunday- 
school in the Bohemian portion of the city, and also 
in the Industrial School for the benefit of the children 
of the poor. At a service there in memory of Mrs. 
Parker and of Mrs. President J. L. Pickard, on July 
l3th, 1900, Mrs. Professor E. R. (Laura Clarke) 
Rockwood said that the Bohemian chapel there was 

—29— 



"in part a monument to her efforts," for she "was 
the first to start out with a subscription paper to raise 
money for its erection, and that she was still held in 
loving remembrance by those who were then in 
attendance." 

Of her service in the Industrial School Mrs. Rock- 
wood said: 

"The work which brought her in closest connection with 
the lowly ones of our town was that which she did in the 
Industrial School, which she helped to organize and of which 
she was superintendent for a long time. Not satisfied with 
meeting the children for an hour or two on Saturdays, she 
called at their homes, became acquainted with their mothers, 
and, in many ways, proved herself their friend. Through this 
work they learned to love her, and they love her still." 

We may add that the children loved to run to her 
on the street, to take her hand and lead her to their 
homes. The mothers looked out wonderingly on 
such familiarity with a 'stranger,' but the moment 
her name was mentioned their faces became radiant, 
and their German or Bohemian words leaped over 
the fragments of their English ones often in an amus- 
ing fashion in their loving haste to express gratitude 
and to tell of their children's new-born industry and 
economy. "My leedle girl ask, 'What can I do.? for 
Mrs. Parker say we muss help mutter.'" "I muss 
sew mine dress, for Mrs. Parker say, 'A stitch in time 
save nine.'" Such anecdotes showed her that her 
brief lectures in the school on moral and industrial 
topics were not wasted on the desert air. 

After she left the city some of the little girls who 
did not know of her removal went to the City Hall 
as usual and sang the songs they had learned there 

—30— 



and wrote her a letter of love and sorrow that she 
was gone. The mayor was so atTected by their ten- 
der recollections that he wrote her an account of it all. 

The work to which she devoted brain and hand at 
all times would seem to have been enough to occupy 
the mind and the time of one who made her home 
an Eden for her husband, her children and for many 
beside these, nevertheless she took sincerest pleasure 
in caring for an aged aunt and for her twice widowed 
mother through their latest years, and in giving a 
constant welcome to students to membership in her 
family. Even then such an overwhelming sorrow 
came to her in 1876, that she gladly accepted still 
other responsibilities. When her Lennie at not quite 
15, and her Cora at 11 years of age, passed from 
her sight through the Iowa River, she was stunned. 
She exclaimed: "1 must take up some more dis- 
tinctly christian work or 1 must die." * 

Just then the Iowa Branch of the Woman's Board 
of Missions of the Interior was organized. She was 
asked to do its heaviest work as its secretary. She 

*She felt as did Longfellow when fie wrote: 
"We seek, with joyous quest, 
God's service sweet to wipe all tears away. 
And list we every hour, with eager zest. 
For high command to toil that God has blest; 
So fill we full our endless sunshine day." 
A Massachusetts gentleman, prominent in business life, wrote Mrs. 
Parker what others have thought, viz.: 

"As I read your letter I came to that part beginning, 'And now that 
I cannot work for my own I must have an interest in others or I be- 
lieve I would die.' Nothing that I have read in my life ever touched 
me so deeply as that grand sentence. It makes me a child as I think 
of your forgetting the burden of your own sorrows in the sublime 
effort to make others happy." 

-31— 



gladly accepted the place and resigned it only with 
her life. 

. That her interest in foreign missions was first 
aroused in her Vermont home has been noticed al- 
ready. Oberlin intensified it, for her students were 
then going out among the Indians along the Upper 
Mississippi, among Canada's fugitive slaves and 
Jamaica's freedmen. They went, too, into all the 
hardest fields of home missionary service, the harder 
the better for many of those Oberlin altruists. It 
was natural, then, that during her college course she 
should cherish the thought that she, too, would enter 
the foreign field. 

The American Missionary Association was very 
largely a child of Oberlin. Its secretary, at her grad- 
uation, was an ex-professor of that college. He 
urged her prospective husband to take her into one 
of its chief foreign fields in 1853, either to the Mendi 
Mission, where they should reduce the language to 
writing, or to Siam where some infelicities at Bangkok 
demanded adjustment. At that time his health was 
so infirm that some believed that three months 
would terminate his active work. That incident 
alone detained her in this country. It did not check 
her interest in missions. As a teacher thenceforward 
her supreme effort was to develop intellect and heart, 
to create helpful interest in all mankind with no limits 
of zone or race. 

Her obvious missionary influence was most marked 
in the case of Miss Hester A. Hillis, who came to 
Grinnell a shrinking yet heroic soul, responsive to 
every touch of sympathy, to every suggestion of ser- 

—32— 



vice. Her unostentatious self-sacrifice, her ever- 
growing self-direction gathered about her a regiment 
of friends, made her seem destined to conspicuous 
usefulness. Mrs. Parker, more than all others com- 
bined, secured her a place as missionary to Ceylon 
for ten years, and then, when, in a moment of hu- 
man and official infirmity, she was not returned to a 
Tamil field, she resolved to be an independent mis- 
sionary in Central India, none were more zealous 
than her former teacher in supplementing her efforts. 
The 'Hillis Alcove' in the library of Iowa College 
named in honor of that first missionary from the in- 
stitution, is ample proof of the respect cherished for 
her and for her work by those who knew her best, 
and the tearful love of Tamil mothers for her, the 
gift of her name to their children and their loving 
emulation of her life — all these furnish abundant evi- 
dence that Mrs. Parker was wise in leading her into 
that field. 

When she was called to the secretaryship of the 
Iowa Branch she needed no quickening of interest 
for its work. Her heart was in it all, for an impulse 
to it was a longing for the manifested love of the 
children who had dropped so suddenly from her 
arms. Other mothers she saw in vision whose chil- 
dren were lost, hopelessly lost; other homes appeared 
on which rested the shadow of the raven's wing, 
homes in which no christian trust ever entered with 
its gladdening promise. For such mothers, for such 
homes, she accepted this new privilege. 

Here, as elsewhere, she never asked how little she 
could do, but rather how much that would be help- 

—33— 



fill. She never sought prominence; she always 
longed to open a whidow into her own mind. If 
her words ever seemed beautiful or glowing it was 
not that she sought to make them so, but because 
she succeeded in disclosing something of her own 
thought. 

She commenced her first report (in May, 1877) 
with the words: 

"The beginning of any enterprise is a formative period, full 
of obstacles and discouragements. Study must conquer 
ignorance, failure give us the best experience, plans must be 
abandoned for better ones, opinion meet opinion in fair dis- 
cussion till the best shall be chosen to mold our action, 
until we learn our work and the workers, and how to make 
the most and best of both. The history of this first year of 
the Iowa Branch furnishes no exception to our statement. 

"At Burlington, June 1, 1876, we resolved to be either the 
Aaron or the Hur under our Moses' hand while we urge on 
the battle of Christianity against Heathenism, proclaiming to 
the vanquished, 'O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and 
not comforted, behold I will lay thy stones with fair colors 
and thy foundations with sapphires. And all thy children 
shall be taught of the Lord and great shall be the peace of 
thy children.' And to the God of battles, as of peace, have 
our earnest cries arisen for soldiers and standard-bearers, 
for wealth and the willing mind to consecrate it. Hence the 
year has been one of marked progress, notwithstanding the 
pressure of the times." 

Her beginning of the second report was as follows: 

" '1 am dazzled with the philosophy of the Gospel,' said 
the first thinker of America only a few weeks ago; and, re- 
sponsive, on the other side of the globe, a state officer testi- 
lled, 'The most important and prosperous thing in Tokio is 
Christianity.' In the service of this philosophy, this Chris- 
tianity, we meet to-day." 

—34— 



A type of her winsome urgency appears at the 
close of her sixth report: 

"The self-sustaiiiini; churches of Iowa are about to throw 
their arms around their less fortunate brotherhood. The 
ministers and laymen, the churches with their pastors, are 
pledged to your needs, and give you the blessed opportunity 
of supporting the greatest enterprise of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Will you do it? 

"A sense of personal responsibility for the advancement of 
the kingdom of Christ is what every one of us needs to-day. 
It should drop in our speech, glow in our letters, weave it- 
self into our plans, and work out more than our own salva- 
tion. Let us call to one another over this great state and 
proclaim the magnitude and the necessities of this branch of 
christian effort till a glow of apostolic zeal is felt from hearth- 
stone to pulpit, till the churches are linked together, for East 
and West and North and South, and every one who calls 
himself by Christ's name shall lay his gift upon the altar and 
say, 'The world to Christ we bring.' " 

Of woman's relation to the world's evangelization 
she said in her eighth report: 

"There is no hope of success in christianizing the world 
until woman is more surely reached. The mother and the 
home, these are the greatest moral powers the earth knows, 
and in the eastern hemisphere are pre-eminently the hope or 
the despair of the world." 

Of the missionaries' need of sympathy she wrote 
as follows in 1885: 

"Follow them in peril on the deep, among a strange peo- 
ple where the dear native tongue is not heard, among rob- 
bers who make spoil of their goods, or where they are 
shunned as the evil one. Their home is often unsubstantial 
or on damp and malarious soil, poisonous insects creep in 
their drawers and beds and even hang over them from 
thatched roofs or twine on the veranda pillars. They are 
sometimes forced to live on native food, ill adapted to their 

—35— 



health or needs. If they depend on foreign supplies the 
flour and meal may be musty, canned meat or fruit often 
spoiled, prepared food attacked by ants in most secluded 
places and devoured in a night. Children must be sent 
home at an early age to prevent contamination or the evil 
effects of the climate. 

"Are such experiences easy to be borne? It is not ail these, 
nor separation from friends nor from children which most 
calls for our sympathy; but in the words of President An- 
gell, of Michigan University — formerly United States minis- 
ter to China to negotiate a treaty — 'Really the hardest thing, 
what I did not know of, something that we cannot appreci- 
ate, is what may be called the tremendous pressure of heathen 
life that bears down upon a man until it seems to force the 
very life out of him. As a matter of fact when they live too 
long in the interior, some of them actually suffer from men- 
tal aberration.' " 

She quoted a similar thought from President Albert 
Loughridge, now of Marshall College, Texas, and for- 
merly a missionary in India. 

Nowhere was the fervor of affection more mani- 
fest than when she wrote of individual missionaries 
and of their work. In October, 1887, she noticed 
the life of Miss Hillis who had "passed from the in- 
creasing joy of her ministry on earth to the greater 
joy of ministry from Heaven." 

"To those regions of need [in India] she went from our 
homes, from our college classes, remaining ever in our hearts. 
Before she left she was a sister of charity, an angel of mercy, 
the voice of God to all about her. She must have been no 
less abroad. May all memories of her be like the falling 
mantle of the ascending prophet — a new commission to carry 
the good news to every creature, a new impulse to copy her 
divinely heroic life, a life hid with Christ in God." 

-••36— 



She alluded to Mrs. Magoun in 1897, saying: 
"One year ago we seemed to hear the query, 'Knowest 
thou that the Lord will take away thy leader from thy head 
to-day?' For twenty-five years Mrs. .Vlagoun had led thought 
for foreign missions in the state, as Secretary or as President, 
then as Honorary President. She was in the valley of shadow, 
and on January 7th passed over the river. To-day, on the 
other side, she would say to us: 

'O friends of mortal years. 
The trusted and the true, 
Ye are watching still in the valley of tears — 
But I wait to welcome you.' 
"How soon the welcome may come we do not know, but 
we do know that, whatever is left for us to do, must be done 
quickly." 

She closed her last 'Home' report in October of 
last year in her characteristically sweet and stimulat- 
ing style: 

"With this happy ending we begin a new year. We can- 
not rest in our joy; we still hear 'the cry of the children,' 
and the wailing of widows and orphans which will not cease 
until Jesus reigns. To this sublime end we bend our ener- 
gies. It is worthy of our best, our steadfast efforts. So let 
us make our pledges, bring our thank-offerings, study our 
calendar in preparation for our quiet Sabbath evening hour, 
answer our letters, fill the blanks, then if we 

'Speak a shade more kindly than the year before. 
Pray a little oftener, love a little more, 
Cling a little closer to the Father's love, 
Life below shall liker grow to the life above.' 
Within that hallowed year to which she was look- 
ing forward, her 'life below' passed serenely on and 
dissolved into 'the life above.' 

The portions of this work which were most nearly 
invisible cost her most. In addition to her regular 
correspondence, there were words of hope to the 

—37— 



over-burdened home missionary wives, aid in devel- 
oping programs for many localities, the copying and 
transmission of information, preparing itineraries for 
lecturers and missionaries visiting Iowa, and main- 
taining a personal acquaintance with those on the 
foreign field and with the persons most active at 
home. 

Just what it all cost in time and effort only one 
can know whose desk was near her own during all 
these years. The joy that came to her from it all 
can be appreciated only by one who heard the ex- 
clamations of pleasure and saw the overflow which 
dimmed the eyes as correspondence brought her 
ever-increasing expressions of gratitude and of affec- 
tion for aid and for sympathy. 

Mrs. Parker attended the annual meeting of the 
W. B, M. I. in the autumn of 1899 on crutches. 
She seemed to be nearing complete recovery from a 
fall in the previous January, In January of 1900 
she began to suffer from apparent rheumatism grow- 
ing steadily worse until April 2nd, when she made 
her last entry in her aiary. On the next day her 
pulse ran up to l60. The end seemed very near for 
a time. The true character of the disease then ap- 
peared unquestionable. It was nervous exhaustion, 
the result, in part at least, of her fall. A fatal ter- 
mination was probable; "one step up and two down 
to the end," said her physician. His prophecy proved 
true, notwithstanding the best exercise of human 
skill to prevent it. 

She had suffered much, but hoped and expected to 
recover. She had desired to round out twenty- five 

—38— 



years in her missionary secretaryship. Days, months 
and years at her desk had brought her heart to heart 
with loving friends and made them dearer, had com- 
municated a part of herself to others in Iowa, in Chi- 
cago and around the world, which came back to her 
again in gladdest benediction. The loved queen in 
the home, welcomed as a benefactor wherever she 
went, she loved to live in this world. After present- 
ing her with a loving message from friends at one 
time, the husband said: "This is a good world to 
live in." Her response was quick and emphatic: 
"It is." But sulTering led her slowly to be willing, 
and then to choose, to go soon. During those later 
hours of impending farewells she could utter but a 
few words at a time and with difficulty. She said to 
her daughter that she had many things to say but 
could not speak them. The few words she could 
utter were very precious. The dearest must not be 
repeated. 

Her daughter, constantly at her side, never heard 
her quote so much poetry as then to express the 
thoughts of the hour. On one occasion when her 
husband was leaving to preach the funeral sermon 
for an old friend, with her 'Good bye,' she repeated 
Mrs. Browning's stanza, changing a single word: 
"And friends, dear friends, when it sliall be 
That this low breath is gone from me. 

And round my bier ye come tO' weep, 
Let one, most loving of you ail, 
Say, 'Not a tear must o'er'" him '"fall: 
He giveth his beloved sleep.' " 
She had often expressed a wish to go at last with 
her husband without an hour of separation. This 

—39— 



was much in her thought while dropping so steadily 
down to the close. "If I go now, you will come 
soon," she said on one occasion. On another, when 
disease and medicine combined to render her occasion- 
ally unconscious of environment, he kneeled at her 
couch for the usual "Good night." It was thought 
that she might not be entirely aware of his presence, 
but she attempted to speak. She failed. A little 
later the daughter came to his room to say: 

"Mother has just said that she wanted to ask you if you 
were telHng her 'Good night' forever? I told her: 'Oh, no. 
Just for to-night.' She then said: 'If he was saying it for- 
ever, 1 wanted to ask him to remember the inscription on 
our monument in the cemetery.' " 

The daughter was amazed. She did not remem- 
ber the inscription. She feared that her mother's 
mind was in shadow. But she could have uttered no 
thought more tenderly sacred than that, for that in- 
scription was very precious to the parents for what it 
was in itself and because of its origin. Twenty- four 
years before, they were seeking some expressive 
phrase or sentiment to place upon the monument 
above the dear children who had just fallen asleep. 
They found nothing satisfactory. At last the hus- 
band inquired if this would seem appropriate: "Good 
Night!'' on one side of it; "Soon 'Good Morning!' " 
on the other. It voiced the sweetest thought just 
then in her heart. It became vital in her memory. 
It came back, in suggestion, from those dying lips as 
from the very threshold of Heaven. 

To her husband's request at another time to come 
back to him often if it should be possible, she replied 
with special emphasis, "I will." 

—40— 



We are sure that no seraph would leave the realms 
of bliss more gladly to minister to a friend, or even 
to a stranger, than she; none would be more delighted 
in being recognized on such a visit. But she hardly 
expected to enjoy such a recognition; she had seen 
so much apparent evil in such reported visits from 
the Unseen. Nevertheless, no mortal ever joined the 
immortals who would receive a sincerer welcome at 
any hour and in any circumstances than this one who 
lived so long and always so beautifully. 

Always grateful, as she was, for the smallest act of 
kindness, she was tenderly sensitive to the tokens of 
esteem which came to her during all her hours of 
decline, whether they were in oral or written messages, 
ill the fragrance of flowers from near and from far 
which constantly filled her room, in the sweetness of 
the songs which were wafted to her bedside in some 
of which her own voice could join, or in the very 
sympathetic prayers of her pastor in public and in her 
presence. When told that the Executive Committee 
of the Iowa Bianch of the W. B. M. I. had decided 
to devote their 'Twentieth Century Fund' to the erec- 
tion of a missionary school or hospital which should 
bear her name, she exclaimed: "Oh, if their kind 
words make me so happy, how shall I feel if the 
Master should say, 'Well done'.?" If she could 
have known all the tokens of love and admiration 
which have been given since then by individuals and 
by groups of friends in societies and in memorial 
exercises, she would have been overwhelmed with 
speechless amazement. 

At the request of friends the memorial services 

—41— 



were deferred four days, till Baccalaureate Sunday. 
It was seemly that her representative and servant 
should be borne away to our Hazel wood from the 
midst of that college anniversary in which she had 
always been so deeply interested and to which, in 
earliest years, she had contributed so much. The 
pall-bearers were selected from old friends residing 
out of town, from college students and from the fac- 
ulty. They were W. D. Evans Esq., Hampton, Iowa; 
D. W. Evans, Esq., Pipestone, Minnesota; Messrs. 
C. E. Quaife and J. A. Meade, college seniors, and 
Professor Allen Johnson and Professor J. S. Nollen. 
The music was touchingly appropriate. 'The Lord 
is My Shepherd', was sung by the College Glee Club; 
'Palms', by Professor Emery; and Mrs. Vittum, Mrs. 
Mack, Professor Emery and Mr. O. P. Parish sang 
the anthem entitled, 'Vital Spark, of Heavenly Flame', 
which Mrs. Parker had often sung and which she 
chose for the occasion. The addresses were made 
by Professor S. J. Buck, her colleague in the faculty 
thirty-tlve years ago; by Mrs. Dr. A. L. Frisbie, the 
President of the Iowa Branch of the W. B. M. I., 
and by Rev. E. M. Vittum, D. D., her pastor. 

Professor Buck's address was chiefly biographical, 
a review, largely, of work noticed on preceding pages. 
He had personal knowledge of her varied duties, 
especially in 1864, when his own helpfulness was 
cordial and when the heroic cooperation of the young 
women during lonely, shadowy hours, made them so 
dear to her to the end of life. 

We regret that avoidance of repetition compels the 

—42— 



omission of most of his address. In speaking of her 
in her principalship he said: 

"As a teacher she was thorough, painstaking, conscien- 
tious. Her woric did not end when she had finished the task 
in the class-room. She made a home for scores of students, 
and her house was headquarters for all her women pupils. 
As the years came and went all found a welcome, good ad- 
vice and true friendship at her home. She gave herself to 
the service of the college, the church, the prayer-meeting in 
church or college, and in all possible ways helped create a 
wholesome atmosphere where young people could develop 
good scholarship, good manners, gond morals, good 
character. 

* * :t: * * 

"The co-educational idea was not new to her or her hus- 
band. Mrs. Parker's ideals, her unstinted service, and her 
life-work were builded into the deepest foundations of the 
best things here. We have had instructors from Yale and 
Bowdoin, Amherst and Williams. Dartmouth and other insti- 
tutions American and foreign, but it cannot be truthfully 
denied that some contributions from the experiments and 
the experiences at Oberlin helped to shape things here.' 
From the earliest beginnings the institution was co-educa- 
tional. * * * Iowa College was not intended to be 
copied after Oberlin, but some things proven to be best there 
naturally came to be adopted here. 

"Mrs. Parker was sensible, womanly, of quick intuitions. 
Her birth in New England, her education in the Middle West, 
her life and experiences for forty-four years in Iowa, with 
many trials, her position of influence and power at Grinnell 
and at Iowa City, all combined to give her a ripeness of char- 
acter which may challenge our admiration. In 1896 her 
Alma Mater conferred upon her the degreee of 'A. M.', hon- 
orary. No one who knew her well could question the pro- 
priety of that gift and recognition of honorable and useful 
ability. Many daughters of Oberlin have done nobly, but 
few, 1 think, have excelled her." 

—43— 



After some unwritten words of appreciation, Pro- 
fessor Buck said: 

"Lest these estimates of Mrs. Parker's work may seem 
extravagant, let me read a brief minute made by the trustees 
when, in 1867, Professor Parker was first called to Iowa State 
University. The students remonstrated by the hand of James 
Irving' Manatt, now professor at Brown University, and among 
other reasons, because Mrs. Parker was such a 'power', not 
only in her own department, but also in all the departments 
of the college. The trustees concurred, saying her services 
were 'invaluable'. 

When, in 1S9S, Professor Parker resigned for the last time 
from collegiate work, the trustees adopted a minute prepared 
by Dr. Albert Shaw and Hon. R. M. Haines. They spoke 
strongly of her influence in the college, and said that her 
high service had been 'so generous, so tactful and so unfail- 
ing as to have reached beyond the quality of great talent to 
something like that of a veritable genius for sympathetic 
helpfulness.' 

"Christian teacher, faithful, conscientious and true, kind 
neighbor, sister, mother, wife, Hail and Farewell, honored 
alumna of Alma Mater!" 

MRS. DR. A. L. FRISBIE'S ADDRESS. 

The Woman's Board of Missions of the Interior was organ- 
ized in Chicago, October 27th, 1S6S. The women of Iowa 
immediately responded to its call for their sympathy and aid. 
That their work might be more effective, they organized the 
Iowa State Branch of the Woman's Board of Missions at Bur- 
lington, June tst, 1876. Mrs. G. F. Magoun was made pres- 
ident. She filled this office with zeal and ability until she 
passed into the shadow of suft'ering and approaching death. 
Mrs. L. F. Parker was elected secretary, and June 1st, 1900, 
she finished twenty-four years of service in this office. Words 
cannot express what that service has meant in strength and 
helpfulness to the cause and to those associated with her in 
the work. Her letters, always wise and winning, were scat- 

—44— 



tered broadcast tliruui^hout the state. Her voice was frequent- 
ly heard in meetings of the state and local associations, speak- 
inij ot the needs of women in non-Christian lands and plead- 
ing for the sympathetic support of those who have gone to 
carry to them instruction, healing and light. 

This work was ever upon her heart, and with rare tact she 
sought to interest friend and neighbor in etiorts which seemed 
to her the necessary outcome of Christian life. Her influence 
in this direction upon the students whom she met in her long 
and close connection with educational work cannot be es- 
timated. She was quick to detect in any of them tendencies 
that might be developed into fitness for the foreign mission- 
ary work, and after any such had given themselves to this 
service, she followed them with loving thought and prayer, 
a little closer and more tender than that with which she en- 
folded all young people whose lives had touched her own. 

During the twenty-four years that she was the secretary of 
the Iowa Branch she was absent from its annual meeting but 
twice. In 1S80 she was in Europe and in ISSI she was de- 
tained by illness, but she prepared the report which was read 
by another. These reports were prominent features of our 
annual meetings. They weve marked by a faultless literary 
style, a calm, clear insight that recognized tendencies, diffi- 
culties and opportunities, and a gentle insistence*that sought 
to bring each woman to realize her part ot the responsibility 
for preaching the gospel to every creature. Each year she 
brought something tresh, suggestive and inspiring, until we 
wondered at her inexhaustible resources. 

Through her instrumentality, the organization of the Con- 
gregational women of the state for foreign missionary work 
became so complete that it is held up as a model for other 
states. As often as possible she attended the annual meetings 
of the W. B. M. I., and her presence and counsel were highly 
valued by the ofl^icers of that society. 

Time allows me only this brief outline of her work in con- 
nection with the Iowa Branch through these twenty-four 
years, whose record is written in heaven. But although she 

—45— 



was unceasing in activities, always asking herself, "What 
more can I do?" it was her own personality — it was what 
she was, that accomplished more than all she did tor the 
cause that was so near her heart. It was her innate refine- 
ment of nature that gave to her face the sweet light that we 
loved; to her voice, its gentle cadences; to her form and 
bearing, their unconscious dignity. It was her great, unsel- 
fish heart, full of sympathy and appreciation for all, that 
made her "our dear Mrs. Parker." Many learned to love 
the cause she so loved because they first loved her. She was 
a living refutation of the unspoken thought of some to-day, 
that the foreign missionary work appeals only to the relig- 
ious specialist and enthusiast, or to restless souls who are 
shut out from other opportunities and activities. Here was 
a woman of strong intellect, noble soul, high aspirations and 
liberal culture, loving art and nature and literature, llrst of all 
loving and caring for home and family, sought and valued 
in social circles, and yet, with steady, unswerving purpose, 
giving to the point of sacrifice, labor, time, money, herself— 
that other women might know the Christian truth which 
had so blessed her life, which had been her strength and in- 
spiration in toil, and her solace in suffering — which had giv- 
en to her an honored womanhood, wifehood and mother- 
hood. 

Do you remember the wonderful thmgs that Sidney Lanier 
saw in the eyes of his wife? 

"Oval and large and passion-pure. 
And gray and wise and honor-sure; 
Soft as a dying violet-breath, 
Yet calmly unafraid of death; 

Thronged, like two dove-cotes of gray doves. 
With wife's and mother's and poor folks' loves, 
And home loves and high glory loves. 
And science-loves and story-loves. 

And loves for all that God and man 
In art or nature make a plan; 

—46— 



And lady loves for spidery lace 
And broideries and supple i;race, 

And diamonds and the whole sweet round 
Of littles, that large life compound, 
And loves for God and God's bare truth, 
And loves for Magdalen and Rutii ! 

Dear eyes, dear eyes ! And rare, complete. 
Being heavenly sweet and earthly sweet." 

All these things we have seen in those eyes that are to-day 
closed upon us, but opened with glad wonder upon faces she 
had lost awhile, upon scenes that satisfy all her hunger for 
beauty, upon the face of Him whom her soul loved. We 
mourn for ourselves, we wonder how we can spare her; but 
if we love her, we shall take up the work that she laid down 
and which she still loves, as a sacred legacy from her. She 
has entered upon higher service. For us, yet a little longer, 
are the earthly opportunities. 

REV. E. M. VITTUM'S ADDRESS. 

We have heard of Mrs. Parker's early life in this commu- 
nity and of her work in its broadest interests. It remains for 
me to speak a few words of personal appreciation and atfec- 
tion in the name of those that have known her in these last 
and ripest years. It is a sad yet blessed privilege to voice 
for you our last good-by. 

It was the request of our friend while she yet lingered with 
us, that we should avoid on this occasion any expression of 
admiration that might seem too strong even to the most crit- 
ical. It is easy to respect this request. A life like hers and 
a love like ours do not need words. 

"For the heart speaks most when the lips are dumb." 
In deference to her desire as well as from the nature of the 
case, we shall not attempt to put into empty, vain, valueless 
words the profound earnestness and honesty of what we feel. 
' The training of a child, it is said, should begin a hundred 
years before he is born. However that may be, the training 

—47— 



of our friend in practical goodness began while she was yet 
in the cradle. A few years ago I met, in the northern part of 
the state, an aged man, good and true, who declared that all 
he had been in life was due to the kindness shown him when, 
a youth in his teens, he had worked as a hired laborer for 
Mrs. Parker's father on the old farm in Vermont. The in- 
fluence that came from the unfeigned, disinterested kindness 
of that pure, peaceful, christian home had laid the founda- 
tion of all that had been good in his life, while this friend of 
ours was yet a little child. Now you may begin with this 
childhood home of helpful and thoughtful piety, and you 
can trace this same current through the gently sloping planes 
of life — never hastening, never ceasing, gradually widening 
and increasing in power down to this day, when it has at 
last entered the Ocean of Love which we call Heaven. The 
facts to which reference has been made are familiar to us all. 
I have heard women whose heads are turning gray, tell of 
how freely and kindly they were entertained in her home 
when it could have been done only at great self-sacrifice on 
her part, when she was doing triple duty as teacher, house- 
keeper and mother — and that, too, with the narrow, incon- 
venient surroundings in which the Grinnell people all lived 
during the early days. I have heard the cultured scholar and 
gentlemanly diplomat. Professor Manatt, say in substance— 
not to attempt exact quotation— that, of all the influences 
that formed his life, many of the purest and strongest and 
most uplifting and most enduring, came from Sarah C. Par- 
ker. But time forbids us from following this line of thought. 
All the students that she knew in Iowa City and Grinnell 
were her sons and daughters; and to-day, all over this land, 
and in many lands beyond the seas, her children rise up and 
call her blessed. 

We have known her as a lady, studious, thoughtful, cul- 
tured. We have known her as a lover of all that is good and 
beautiful, a true artist in soul. We have known her as a 
worker, not shrinking from any duty or any class of duties. 
But what made her so great in usefulness was something 

—48— 



beyond her wisdom, beyond lier culture, beyond her indus- 
try. It was herself, her character, her personality. She had 
known deep and abidin.t;- sorrow; she knew much of that 
which makes earthly life precious; and all her varied experi- 
ences were blended into a life of tranquility. The phrase, 
"strenuous life," is frequently used just now, but we would 
not apply it to her life. There was in her life nothin^^ of 
eager, pushing hurry and impatience, bordering on fretful- 
ness, which we associate with what we call the "strenuous 
life"; nothing of loud lamentation or noisy hilarity. Rather 
let us call it a persistent life. Never resting, only as rest be- 
comes an essential part of the best work; never discouraged; 
never losing sight of the high ideals and noble purposes that 
were ever before her and present with her; she has gone 
steadily on from the beginning to the end. 

Kind and loving as she was, she had in her character an 
element of inflexibility— 1 use the word in the best sense — 
inherited, perhaps, from New England puritanism. We rec- 
ognized this as an essential part of the harmony of her life. 
I have heard her speak of meeting John Brown of Osawat- 
omie; and while she did not approve of all his methods, per- 
haps, she recognized in him a kindred spirit in this at least: 
he would do anything, dare anything, sutler anything and 
everything for what he believed to be right. And if Mrs. 
Parker had been called to sutler a martyr's death, she would 
have gone to the stake as calmly and peacefully and unhesi- 
tatingly as she went about the simplest household duties day 
by day. 

I have a personal word for which I must be pardoned. 
Nominally, I have been her pastor for nearly nine years — 
more years than has been true of any other man here since she 
entered college, at least. And as I have blessed for her and 
others like her the broken bread and out-poured fruit of the 
vine, sacred emblems of our remembrance of the Master, 1 
have realized something of what was in the heart of John the 
Baptist when he said, "I have need to be baptized of thee, 
and comest thou to me?" I have been baptized of her. In 

—49— 



this position where providence seems to have placed me, not 
to be a priest nor commander, but representative of this peo- 
ple, it has been one of my strongest supports that I have 
been baptized anew, day by day, by the example of her in- 
fluence and the power of her prayers. 1 have been her pas- 
tor, but no more than she has been mine. I would not in- 
trude this personal word but for the conviction that it ex- 
presses what is in many other hearts. From the youngest 
to the oldest, all bear the same testimony. 

The circle of her acquaintance among the young people 
has been a little smaller, probably, these later years; but her 
influence none the less marked. We have seen with thank- 
fulness the change that has come over the dream life and the 
real life of those that felt the touch of her friendship. The 
same has been true in the many departments of helpful ac- 
tivity to which she freely gave herself in church, college and 
community. 

Shall we ask what was the secret of her power? It is no 
secret; it is clear as God's sunlight. It is only a living illus- 
tration of pure religion and undeflled before God and the 
Father. From her I have learned something that grammar 
and lexicon and commentary and theology and philosophy 
could never teach me concerning what Christ meant when 
he said, "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him shall never thirst; but the water that 1 shall give him 
shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting 
life." Her religious life was not a roar and rush like Niagara, 
not a frozen iceberg and then a flood like the streams of the 
North, not intermittent like a geyser of Yellowstone, not 
restless and troubled like the waves of the sea; but a well of 
water, rising higher and higher in her own soul, until it 
peacefully and naturally overflowed to freshen the world of 
life around her and save the soul of many a thirsty wan- 
derer. And it all came through her from Jesus Christ. 

In this company of personal friends, we may add a thought 

that might seem indelicate under other circumstances. If 

ever two people were made for one another, it is true of these 

two friends of ours who have walked together so many 

—50— 



years — difVerent lmtoui;!! to supplement each the other, yet 
so harmonious in aims and ideals and in the conception of 
what life really means. Professor and Mrs. Parker! We 
have never thout;ht of one without the other! And we shall 
never do so. This closeness of union has made the parting 
harder to endure; yet there are compensations. So much 
ot the life and character of each has gone into the building 
of the life and character oi the other, that our dear brother 
during the years that we pray he may be spared to us, can 
truly feel that she is living with him on earth and he is living 
with her in heaven. 

Good night! Soon good morning! And who can doubt 
it? Throw philosophy and theology to the wind if you 
must. Still we know God did not create such a soul to de- 
stroy it utterly, just when it had become ripest and strong- 
est and most like the divine. God is not the God of the 
dead but of the living. 

A short time before her death, Mrs. Parker asked me to 
make this copy of a little poem which had been a great 
comfort to her. It was printed on silk; and she told me it 
had been pinned to the window curtain near her bed for 
years, and that she had read it day by day as something that 
expressed her own feelings. She did not say directly that she 
wished it read on this occasion, but I understood that was 
the purpose for which she wished me to make this copy: 

1 cannot say, 
Beneath the pressure of life's cares to-day, 

1 joy in these; 

But I can say 
That I had rather walk in the rugged way, 

If Him it please. 

1 can not feel 
That all is well when dark'ning clouds conceal 

The shining sun; 

But then I know 
God lives and loves; and say, since this be so, 

Thy will be done. 
—51— 



I can not speak 
In happy tones; the tear-drops on my cheek 

Show 1 am sad, 

But I can speak 
Of grace to suffer with submission meek, 

Until made glad. 

1 do not see 
Why God should e'en permit some things to be. 

When He is love; 

But I can see. 
Though often dimly, through the mystery. 

His hand above. 

1 do not know 
Where falls the seed that I have tried to sow 

With greatest care; 

But I shall know 
The meaning of each waiting hour below 

Sometime, somewhere. 

I do not look 
Upon the present, nor in Nature's book 

To read my fate; 

But 1 do look 
For promised blessings in God's holy book. 

And I can wait. 

I may not try 
To keep the hot tears back; but hush that sigh, 

"It might have been!" 

And try to still 
Each rising murmur, and to God's sweet will 

Respond, "Amen." 



-52— 



A minutely accurate estimate of the life and the 
character of such a friend as the one noticed in these 
pages is not easy for any one. It may be especially 
dil^lcult for him with whom she was accustomed to 
think aloud, to whom she gave sincerest affection 
through half a century of sunshine and of shadow, 
and for whom even shadow was made sunshine by 
her presence. Nevertheless, with calmest possible 
expression he would say that the central, radical force 
in her life was the love of beauty. 

In things material her enjoyment of the beautiful 
was delicate, refined and even glowing, while none 
rose into completer rapture when, if possible, beauty 
towered into sublimity. She felt the poet's glow of 
soul when she looked on tie ocean gently heaving 
as if it were the breast of a sleeping child; on the 
jeweled crown of night, or on the mountain peak lift- 
ing its snowy crest up among the stars. Entranced 
she stood among the masterpieces of art, and bore 
away their images in mind to become a lifelong joy. 
To repress the gratification of a refined taste at the 
demand of benevolence cost a second thought and an 
effort now and then. 

Still more profoundly was she charmed by the 
intellectual. A beautiful expression of a beautiful 
thought, "Like apples of gold in baskets of silver," 
was a pre-eminent delight. Hence bits of poetry 

—53— 



fixed themselves in her memory as naturally as iron- 
tilings cling to a magnet. She never seemed to learn 
poetry by conscious etfort. Lines read a single time 
often came back to her when the occasion called for 
them. 

But high above all else she loved the beautiful in 
character. To the nobly aspiring she was drawn 
with a real passion to render some aid if possible. 
From Thoreau's declaration that he taught, not for 
the good of others, but "simply for a livelihood," 
she shrank as from a contagion. She thought little 
of what she could gain; she was happiest when she 
could give, and when her gift ennobled soul, made 
the human more nearly divine. 

Her religion admitted thoughts of diify, but her 
life was glorified by the gladness of opportunity 
Sir Walter Scott once said: "Teach self-denial and 
make its practice pleasurable, and you will create for 
the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued 
from the brain of the wildest dreamer." To the 
words 'self-denial' and 'self-sacrifice', she often lis- 
tened wearily, for greatest sacrifice as measured by 
selfishness was highest privilege, according to the 
standard of her soul-full benevolence. "For the joy 
set before" her she walked on the moral heights 
where the cross is borne with thanksgiving as the 
Master loved to bear it. 

Such souls are angel-white. 

Blessed is the man who gives his heart in his hand 
to his dearest friend with a love that fills the future 
with happiest hope and then finds that future happier 
even than Love had ventured to paint it. Blessed 

—54— 



are the children whose mother bears them in her very 
heart and who directs their ever-broadening pathway 
with most wisely cultured thought. Blessed are the 
friends whose converse is an inspiration, whose 
mutual love outlives earthly life, whose very tears at 
the tomb are rich with a heavenward uplift. Blessed 
is the saint whose feet walk, the solid earth in human 
service, whose head is sun-crowned in the realms of 
thought, whose spirit is all at home among the angels, 
sweetly human, serenely angelic. 

To such a one we have said, 'Good Night!' We 
wait to meet her with a glad 'Good Morning!' 

Such a 

"Life shall live forevennore, 
Else earth is darkness at the core, 
And dust and ashes all that is." 

We must believe that life here is not a solemn mock- 
ery, a horrid tragedy. We trust that in the life yon- 
der the most radiant soul grows more radiant still. 
The sun-crowned on earth becomes the Heaven- 
crowned through the eternities. 



-55- 



CcUors of JriniDslttp 

"Fast as the rolling seasons bring 

The hour of fate to those we love, 
Each pearl that leaves the broken string 

Is set in Friendship's crown above. 
As narrower grows the earthly chain, 

The circle widens in the sky; 
These are our treasures that remain, 

But those are stars that beam on high." 



mvs. C. 5. parker. 

Through the fleeting years she has brightened 

All paths that her feet have trod, 
The paths that through shadow and sunshine 

Have ever led upward to God. 

To the weary and sad she has given 

Of her own brave faith a share, 
By a word, a glance, a sunlit smile, 

A touch of hope, a prayer. 

While ever in beauty around her 

Have flourished all things good. 
Gaining life from the shining presence 

Of her gracious womanhood. 

And so, when the Master summoned 

By his messengers of pain. 
The strong, sweet soul of his daughter 

To her Father's house again, 

Having entered"_the gate of service 

Here 'mid earth's toil and strife. 
She found in her glad home-going 

A twice-blessed, endless life. 

Des Moines, June 24, 1900. C M. S. 



^rom Societies. 



The following selections from communications re- 
ceived have been deemed fairly representative of all. 
Reasons for the omission of a part or all of highly 
valued tributes may occur to our readers and espe- 
cially when they include references to any beside the 
subject of this sketch. 

Mrs. H. H. (Abbie W.) Robbins, a pupil of hers 
in college, writes: 

"In behalf of the women belonging to the immediate cir- 
cle of Iowa College, I am asked to express to you the esteem, 
honor and love we have for the beautiful woman who, 
through so many years has moved among us, an inspiration 
and a leader toward all things most noble and lovely in 
womanhood. 

"Her teaching, her home and life have been felt by us con- 
tinually as a sweet influence of the rarest refinement and cul- 
ture. Her beautiful personality, tranquil, serene presence, 
and, above all, the ripe christian spirit which pervaded all 
her words and ways have been to each of us an incentive 
toward all that makes for truest womanhood. 

"We would like to express our appreciation of the value, to 
the wide college circle which looked to her as a leader, of 
her delight in beauty, that beauty which is, in its highest 
type, the fineness of truth. In past years, when the rugged- 
ness of truth was more apparent than the beauty of it, she 
contributed not a little by the queenliness of her person, the 
appointments of her home, as well as by the rare distinction 
of her spirit which marked her a gentlewoman, to make the 
beauty of truth apparent to eyes and souls longing tor it. 

"We would also express our sense of the influence for 
true nobleness of character radiating from your home 

—60— 



through all these years for generation after generation of 
students. Many of these have found a welcome to its in- 
most circle, there to be shown that the basis of a home of 
truest culture and delight lies not in material things but in 
the richness of gifts of mind and soul." 

From the message of the Grinnell Historical Club 
we quote the following: 

"Mrs. Parker was not only the founder of the club, but 
also its faithful friend. Here, as in so many other associa- 
tions, her graces of mind and heart made her a central figure, 
and we feel that her place can never be supplied. Her wide 
culture made her an authority on all points which came un- 
der discussion, although her modesty often kept her silent. 
We shall miss her wise words of instruction and of counsel. 
The memory of her life will ever be a stimulus to us to seek 
culture, not for its own sake, but in order to make our lives 
more useful to others." 

Mrs. Hon. R. M. (Joanna Harris) Haines, a pupil 
of Mrs. Parker's before 1862, penned the message of 
the College Education Society as follows: 

"It is a great loss to a community or a society when a 
good person is taken from them. But when to goodness of 
heart and nobility of character is added the trained intellect 
and the refinements of culture and to these is superadded an 
attractive and queenly presence, then, indeed, are words in- 
adequate to express the loss. 

"Such a bereavement as this has come to us in the passing 
away of our beloved Mrs. Parker. She was closely connected 
with the missionary and literary organizations of our society 
and these have already expressed, so far as words can, their 
feeling of irreparable loss and sense of her exalted worth. 
It remains for us of the College Education Society to add our 
tribute of love and sorrow. In one respect it is especially 
fitting that we should do so, for the words, 'Christian Edu- 
cation,' better express the line of her active interests and sym- 
pathies than any others. It was this cause that brought her 

—61— 



to our western town when it was a small pioneer villag;e, and 
it was to active untiring work in this cause that she gave the 
best years of her mature life. She was a charter member of 
this society and remained an active worker in it all her life. 
She was the first and last president of the society; and those 
ot you who were present will never forget her pale, sweet 
face with the traces of suffering so plain upon it, as she pre- 
sided at our last meeting, the last official act of her life. 

"With sad hearts we express our sense of loss and bereave- 
ment, and our loving sympathy with her devoted husband 
and daughter. But let us also with grateful hearts thank 
God for the beautiful life that has been lived in our midst, 
and may its influence inspire us to greater faithfulness in 
carrying on the work she has laid down." 

The Congregational Church in Iowa City spread 
the following statement upon its records from the 
pen of Hon. J. L. Pickard: 

"Mrs. Parker's connection with this church for many 
years was so fruitful in all its activities that transfer to an- 
other field was in name only, for the fragrance of her Chris- 
tian devotion abides still with us. 

"Her service to others was so Christ-like that her daily 
life was a benediction to all whose lives she touched. 

"In the home to which the young were always welcomed 
and from which they went out with nobler purposes to en- 
gage in life's contests — in the social circles brightened by her 
presence — in the missionary societies, through which she 
made her influence most potent — in the prayer circles where 
she loved to meet her Saviour and in which she reflected His 
image — in the charitable work to which she gave so much of 
her time and strength, Mrs. Parker, self-forgetful and con- 
secrated, has made her memory blessed." 

E. A. Brainerd, ) Committee 

J. L. Pickard, - of the 

Laura C. Rockwood, ) Church. 



-62— 



The words of the Elizabeth Earle Magoiin Cliih, 
penned by Miss Julia D. Brainerd, were more than 
literary, and those from Mrs, Dr. Clark's Bible 
Class, written by Mrs. Julia C. Grinnell, were kindly 
human as well as eminently religious. 



-63- 



Zovoa (Eolkgc^ 



The Trustees of Iowa College at their meeting last 
June, recorded their recognition of "a debt of grati- 
tude" to Mrs. Parker for eminent service. The es- 
sential part of their June minute was as follows: 

"Her connection with the colIet;e began in its formative 
period and she, as the iirst lady principal, had a prominent 
part in shaping its character as a christian co-educational 
institution. The College owes her a debt of gratitude tor 
the almost lavish manner in which she used hand and head 
and heart in her educational work. 

"She was a friend-winner for the college. Her door stood 
open in hospitality with a welcome that sought out strangers 
as well as friends. 

".She had a genius for securing the confidence and influ- 
encing the lives of the young, and she always had them with 
her. Her home was their home and always remained such in 
after years, for she followed the children of her care wher- 
ever they went with motherly interest and pride. In her 
judgment as to opinions and policies she was conservative 
yet firm in dissent, but always loyal to the college. Her in- 
terest did not end with the ending of her official connection 
with the college for it retained her thoughtful care and ser- 
vice through the mature years of her private life." 

The Alum7ii Association of Iowa College through 
its committee, consisting of Miss Ella E. Marsh, Mrs. 
M. M. Kelsey and Rev. S. A. Arnold, who spoke 
"for those to whom Mrs. Parker was lady principal 
and also for those that knew her only as friend and 
helper," expressed their appreciation of her strength 
and sweetness of character and her varied service, 
adding: 

—66— 



"To us all she was ever the ideal, christian woman, who 
adorned every position, and, with each added year, our es- 
teem for her has broadened and deepened. 

"We shall miss her gracious presence, her cordial greeting,, 
the soul-beauty of that face clear-cut as a cameo." 

Mrs. President George A. Gates wrote to Mrs. 
Parker's daughter, Mrs. John Campbell, May 3, 

1900: 

"We all of Grinnell owe so much to her, for her richness 
of character has left its impress on us all. It is because she 
has lived the triumphal life, has overcome so gloriously that 
she has been most helpful to me. Whatever her cares, per- 
plexities and sorrows she carried them with such calmness 
of strength that 1 felt the inspiration of it. Surely this is no 
slight gift to receive from a friend." 

David W. Norris, Esq., an old-time pupil of hers, 
wrote an editorial for the Times-Republican from 
which we make the following extracts.- 

"To emulate such a life is to make life worth living, and 
he who does it helps to elevate mankind and leaves the world 
better than he found it, and the man or woman who can not 
do this had better not have lived at all. 

"For nearly forty years Mrs. Parker has been a leader in 
the social, religious and literary life of Grinnell, and even 
while she resided in Iowa City she was always a part of Grin- 
nell life, because her heart was there, her life-long associa- 
tions were there, and there was the field of her early labors 
and aspirations. She was one of those rare women who 
combine all those qualities that make woman loved and the 
world bright. Never was a mother more devoted, never was 
a wife more faithful. She was skilled in all the household 
arts, earnest and untiring in the church, in missionary work, 
in charities. She was the organizer of the Historical Club 
and her house was always the center of refined and literary 
associations. 



—67- 



"No one can tell how many young women owe their suc- 
cess and happiness in life to the quiet and shaping influence 
of this good woman. If a girl were poor and without ade- 
quate means, for some reason she was domiciled with Mrs. 
Parker, who not only taught her all the little household econ- 
omies but in some mysterious way made her means adequate 
to the end. If the girl were wayward, she was turned over 
to Mrs. Parker, and, in some way, her character was molded 
and her aspirations directed in the proper way. 
***** 

"Around her always was an atmosphere of cheeriness, 
of cheerfulness, and through sorrow or adversity there was 
the same sunny smile indicating an absolute faith that all 
would be well in the end. Notwithstanding the fact that 
Grinnell is blessed with many noble women of the type of 
Mrs. Parker, it is entirely safe to say that not one has left 
such an impression on its life, more especially on the life of 
its young women." 

A mother wrote: 

"My daughter would be almost willing to have the measles 
again if that could take her into your family once more." 

Eli P. Clark, Esq., a pupil of hers nearly forty 
years ago, writes from Los Angeles, Cal. , that she 
had been his "inspiration," and that in his "long list 
of very dear friends" she was "at the very head." 

The following came when it was too late for her 
to read it or to hear it all: 

"What a crowd of witnesses will sometime arise to testify- 
of your faithfulness, your clear-seeing ability, your unselfish- 
ness and your usefulness. One of the first memories I have 
is of your spreading a lunch for the night watchers with stu- 
dents who were sick and helpless in your house. Blessed 
hands full of ministry and unselfishness yours have been. 
Blessed among women shall you be. You spoke kindly of 
me to my poor father and it made a soft spot in his pillow 

—68— 



for his weary, dyin^t; head. Your pillow ought to have 
many a soft spot in it if kindness counts and good deeds 
avail. Then, too, you taught us lessons of faith and hope 
and trust." 

A student who came to Iowa College thirty-five 
years ago, writes: 

"I spent my first night in Grinnell at your house. Mrs. 
Parker met me at the chapel door on my arrival, and found 
me a boarding place. When I last met her she caught my 
hand in both of hers, saying, 'One of our girls; one of our 
girls.'" 

Another of a later period has written: 
"A talk she gave us girls in our sophomore year taught me 
to love her. Her lecture to us came when I peculiarly needed 
it, and I know that nothing else in my whole college course 
accomplished for me what that did. It has made a vital dif- 
ference in all my later life." 

A teacher writes: 

"The two years 1 spent in your house have had a wonder- 
ful influence on me in all I have done or been since. I 
would not give up the sweet talks we girls had so often with 
Mrs. Parker for anything I can imagine." 

Mrs. Parker was one to whom friends loved to 
come with their most sacred g^riefs, their profoundest 
confidences. They never came in vain. One whose 
heart was bleeding at every pore wrote her: 

"My dear, dear sister, mother, beloved friend, I know not 
what else: Many, many times in the last year have I longed 
to rush to you and, putting my head in your lap, to cry it 
out for once. This is what the thought of you has been to 
me, a place to get comfort. The thought of your being here 
has been a comfort; you have borne sudden grief and been 
able to talk it over cheerfully afterwards." 



—69- 



missionary. 



The Exemtive Committee of the W. B. M. I. 
was represented by Miss Sarah Pollock as follows: 

"I cannot express in this brief letter how much Mrs. 
Paricer's Hfe-work has meant to this Board. She was wise 
in counsel, patient in spirit, stron.a; in purpose, faithful in 
execution. Her co-operation was always so hearty, so glad, 
it made her to us a tower of strength on which we safely 
leaned. Especially to those of us who always sit in these 
rooms has she brought sunshine." 

Then Miss Pollock added: 

"I cannot send this without my personal word of sorrow, 
for I have dearly loved Mrs Parker — lo! these many years — 
and I have written with falling tears. Her letters were a 
comfort to us here, for they always told of something done 
to help, and they always brought cheer and hope. How we 
shall miss the dear handwriting, and how we shall miss her 
at the annual meeting." 

Mrs. Parker's missionary associates hastened also 
to offer their tributes through the press, and in memo- 
rial meetings. Mrs. Nellie G. Clarke wrote for the 
GrinneU Herald and Congregational Iowa, Mrs. A. L. 
Frisbie for Mission Studies. 

At the Memorial Meeting in Chicago, Mrs. J. B. 
Leake paid a touching tribute to her whom she had 
known and loved for more than twenty years. "Her 
name was sufficient to recall her intellectual face, 
lighted up with love to God and all mankind, and 
her earnest, persuasive voice which made one feel that 
her motto was: 'This one thing I do.' It helped one 

—72— 



to emulate her zeal and high endeavor." Mrs. Wil- 
liams recalled her face as a lamp shining through an 
alabaster vase. She had been told that Mrs. Parker 
and Mrs. Magoun were the Iowa Branch. She under- 
stood that after meeting them. Miss Wingate called 
her 'the ideal secretary', and was accustomed to send 
out her reports to inquiring secretaries as models. 
Mrs. Savage recalled Mrs. Humphrey's statement in 
one of her booklets that mathematics and history 
had taken possession of her and not she of them. 
So missionary work had taken possession of Mrs. 
Parker and gloritled her life. She was recalled alTec- 
tionately by Mrs. Professor Wilcox, Mrs. C. H. Case, 
Mrs. A. R. Thain, Mrs. Taylor, Miss Spence and 
others, it was "a season of blessed reminiscence." 

The Advance contains a note of the Annual Meet- 
ing of the Iowa Branch as follows: 

"The hour of the entire meeting to which all had looked 
forward, was the one placed upon the program as 'In Memo- 
riam — Mrs. L. F. Parker. Paper by Mrs. M. M. Kelsey, to be 
followed by voluntary contributions.' This was the first 
time in the history of the Iowa Branch that Mrs. Parker had 
not been present to guide and counsel in all the work of the 
society, and to fulfill her duties as state secretary. Her bles- 
sed spirit seemed over all; but how we miss her. The twenty- 
fourth annual meeting will ever be remembered as the one 
made sacred to the memory of Mrs. Parker. The Iowa 
Branch proposes to erect in China a hospital which shall be 
named for their beloved secretary. The cost of the hospital 
will be $2,000; of this $1,300 has been raised."' 

Mrs. Kelsey was a pupil of Mrs. Parker's during 
the Civil War, and a near neighbor in pioneer days. 
In her paper she said: 

—73— 



"The translation to higher service of Mrs. L. F. Parlcer 
removes the last of our long-time officers. Mrs. Magoun, 
our president; Mrs. Rew, our treasurer; and now our secre- 
tary beloved. Within three years these faithful ones have 
joined other saints who went before, and the Iowa Branch is 
bereft indeed. 

"For twenty-four years Mrs. Parker, as we well know, has 
been the power behind the throne in all work connected with 
the Iowa Branch. Her thousands of letters, her public ad- 
dresses, her wise counsels and her personal friendships have 
been among the leading forces which have gone to its upbuild- 
ing and enlargement.* 

"It is fitting at this gathering — when the absence for the 
first time of her gracious presence, her silver voice and lov- 
ing greetings, are such constant reminders of our bereave- 
ment — to speak to each other of the life, the work and the 
character of our only secretary. 

* * * * * 

"In 1S63 Mrs. Parker was invited to become lady principal 
of Iowa College, in which institution her husband occupied 
the chair of Ancient Languages. The invitation was accepted, 
and for seven years she not only filled but adorned the posi- 
tion. These were busy, useful years. It is no disparage- 
ment to others that she is still called 'The Ideal Lady Princi- 
pal' — dignified and firm, but tender and kind and true to 
every pupil under her care; a conscientious, painstaking 
teacher, the influence and power of whose presence in the 
class-room continues still in the lives of those privileged to 
be under her instruction, an incentive to thoroughness and 
accuracy. She was a wise counselor, a noble woman — fit 
model in every respect for the young women under her care. 
'My girls' she continued to call them to the day of her death, 
and they reverence and treasure her memory and the mem- 
ory of those college days— so largely shaped by her — as a 

*Her leaflets entitled 'What We Owe to Missions', and 'The 
Commercial Value of Missions', have been somewhat widely cir- 
culated. One pastor in Colorado called for 250 copies of the sec- 
ond edition of the latter. 

—74— 



precious legacy. Hundreds of these 'girls' in our own and in 
distant lands, rise up and call iier blessed. 

"Mrs. Parker was the mother of live children, all but one 
of whom preceded her to the heavenly home. Her faith failed 
not, and though sorely bereaved in their loss she could still 
say: 'He worketh in ways we cannot understand, but we 
can believe He knoweth best.' 

"The surviving daughter, Mrs. Campbell of Denver, Colo- 
rado, was privileged to minister to the suffering parent dur- 
ing the last months of her life— a precious companionship 
these months afforded: the daughter, skillful and constant 
and loving in her ministrations; the mother appreciative of 
every effort. Her sweet 'Thank you' never failing, even when 
almost too weak to form the words. 

"Professor Parker was connected with the Iowa State Uni- 
versity for seventeen years, and their home in Iowa City, as 
before and since in Grinnell, was a haven of rest and refresh- 
ment for the discouraged or homesick students. In this 
home financial difficulties were solved for them and flagging 
hopes rekindled to take a college course. Economies were 
practiced that young men and women might have the benefit 
of a thorough education. Mrs. Parker delighted in having 
young people about her and was constantly doing for their 
help and advancement. The Parker home has always been 
noted for its hospitality. 'You mnst break bread with us,' 
was the unanswerable argument which extended many an 
intended call into a visit. 

"Mrs. Parker was skillful in all housewifely arts and ways 
—a woman with a faculty for doing everything well and one 
whose presence adorned every circle or place. She took 
great pleasure in social gatherings and in her own home de- 
lighted to prepare dainty refreshments and make everything 
attractive for her guests. 

"She was an intellectual woman, the one universally se- 
lected as leader of history and literary clubs; and in her at- 
tendance at and preparation for these clubs, she was as con- 
scientious as in her teaching or housekeeping. Always calm, 



-75- 



never hurried, unceasingly industrious — a rare, white-souled 
woman, steadfast, immovable, one who lived to be helpful 
to others. 

"She never forgot a friend and was constantly making 
new ones. 

"Fond of all beautiful things, but content to live in her 
own beautiful thoughts and deeds that her benetkence might 
reach a wider circle. 

***** 

"Much ot Mrs. Parker's thought and time and strength for 
the past twenty-four years has been given to the Iowa 
Branch of the Woman's Board of Missions of the Interior. 
Every auxiliary in the state is in some sense the child of her 
faithfulness and prayers. Her letters have endeared her to 
many who never saw her face, and her knowledge of the 
workers and the work of the Iowa Branch undoubtedly sur- 
passed that of any and every other person in the state. She 
was wise in her judgments; her associates relied upon her 
opinions and accepted her decisions. 'An auxiliary in every 
church and every woman a member,' was the motto she 
adopted and labored to make a reality. How one could be 
a Christian and not be interested in missionary work was 
something she could not understand. During the great suf- 
fering of the last months of her life, she still planned and 
prayed for the upbuilding of Christ's kingdom in the hearts 
of Iowa women that through their efforts the ends of the 
earth might come to know and love the only true God. 
***** 

"Her release came on June fifth, 1900, the first anniversary 
of the day when Mrs. Rew, her co-laborer in the Iowa 
Branch, went to her reward. Together in the mansions of 
eternal rest, v/ith those saved and yet to be saved by their 
beneficence and their prayers out of every tribe and nation, 
our trio of officers walk before God in the beauty of holi- 
ness." 



-76— 



The Executive Committee of the Iowa Branch 
placed 

"On record an expression of their sense of unspeaicable 
loss in tlie deatii of Mrs. L. F. Parker. * * * In our 
meetings she has been a wise counselor and an inspirinjj 
friend. Her quiet, steady, absorbing devotion to woman's 
work for women in non-christian lands has been an ines- 
timable power for good in its unconscious influence up- 
on those around her as well as in its direct results. Her an- 
nual reports are gems of missionary literature, each in wise 
suggestion and invaluable information concerning the work 
and the workers." 



-77- 



IHtsccIIancous. 



Gen. J. Dolson Cox, a classmate, wrote: 

"I can not recall any meeting- with her since our gradua- 
tion, at any rate my vision of her is so vivid as she was 
among us in '5t, with her sweet gravity, her self-contained 
dignity full of earnest good will, an embodiment of con- 
science, of high and pure purpose, making exquisite har- 
mony in spiritual chords, as her soulfull voice led in our 
mortal choir, that she has always seemed to me ever young, 
ever strong, ever the unselfish stay and aid of the friends 
who surrounded her. The consciousness that we are all 
very near the end* of our journey, softens these separations 
a little, I think. One must go, and would it not be a little 
selfish to choose ourselves to be that one, leaving another 
to the mourning and the loneliness? It is now a calm wait- 
ing, serene not gloomy, counting oflf the days one by one. 
For us the separation will be short; it should not be too 
painful." , 

Mrs. Dr. Elisha Gray, Highland Park, 111., writes: 

"Mrs. Parker's influence on me was greater than that of 
any others outside of my mother's home, — in so many ways 
she has been mv ideal woman." 

Mrs. Judge N. C. (Ida Clarke) Young of Fargo, 
North Dakota, voices a thought, uttered by many 
others, which, sacred as it is, can not be omitted 
without a serious deficiency in this sketch. 

"That death 'to you what a desolation only those who 
have witnessed' her 'ideal life' with you, and who have them- 
selves had some experience of the joy which comes from the 

♦Gov. Cox was then only a few weeks from the end, although in 
good health when he penned those words. 

—80— 



wedded union of such a rarely siftfd intellect and spiritual 
soul, can feebly estimate." 

Ex-President William M. Brooks, late of Tabor 
College, now of Los Angeles, California, writes: 

"Oh, how you are blessed with the memory of the many 
years of communion with one of the real saints. I have very 
rarely met a woman with such ability and such loving inter- 
est in all about her." 

W. D. Evans, Esq., of Hampton, Iowa, says: 
"She was more than good. She was grand. She had lived 
on such a high plane that she had not far to go in the tran- 
sition." (He had been a member of her family.) 

Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, of Plymouth 
Church, Brooklyn, after speaking of his gratitude to 
Mrs. Parker for her kindness to his sister, and of the 
profound impression made upon him by a short ac- 
quaintance with her, wrote that a few christians like 
her, 

"Living in every town, would do away with the necessity 
of books upon apologetics and arguments for the divine or- 
igin of Christianity." 

Mrs. Susan R. Ashley, of Denver, wrote to Mrs. 
Campbell: 

"1 shall never forget the sweet, cordial manner of your 
dear mother at our first meeting, which captured me com- 
pletely and made me her devoted friend from that moment. 
1 can realize how she must have endeared herself to all who 
came within her influence. The memory of her beautiful, 
helpful life will rest as a benediction on the lives of many 
whose hearts now ache through the loss of her presence." 

Rev. J. B. Gregg, D. D., of Colorado Springs, 
wrote Mrs. Campbell: 

"Your mother was a woman whom it was good to know 
even slightly, and you know, better than I can tell, how 

—81— 



great a blessing it has been to have such a woman for a 
mother, so strong, so fair-minded, so sincere, so earnest, so 
devout, so wide-horizoned and sympathetic with ail things 
good." 

The following message came from R. C. Craven, 
Esq., of the editorial statf of the World- Herald, 
Omaha, for himself and his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth 
Evans Craven: 

"We send you by express this afternoon some flowers — 
we chose them white — by beholding which we touch the 
hem of God's garment; the language of the angels, telling the 
same tender, cheerful, hopeful message all the day long, in 
the morning and in the evening, in life and at death. They 
say 'Be not afraid.' 

"When David Coppertleld first saw Agnes Wickfield she 
was standing still higher on the stair than he, in the subdued 
and refining light that fell through a window of stained glass 
— and she was pointing upward. So she seemed through life 
to him. And at the end of his story he writes: 

" 'Agnes! O my soul! So may thy face be by me when I 
close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting 
from me like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee 
pointing upward!' t 

"In all literature I know of no finer tribute to womanhood 
than this of Dickens. 1 would apply the spirit of it to Mrs. 
Parker. So she seemed to us and to thousands of others, as 
I know she did to you — calm, serene, cheerful, hopeful, with 
a light in her face that suggested the contiguity of some holy 
place, and ever, ever pointing upward. Death has withdrawn 
the living figure, but in our hearts remains and ever will 
remain a vision, both memorial and prophetic, I trust, of a 
woman standing in a soft light, with one arm extended and a 
finger pointing toward the skies." 



-82— 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

022 139 963 8 



